HopeGardens, or the RoyalBotanical Gardens, Hope, were formerly part of major Richard Hope's Estate. One of the English officers who helped capture Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, Hope was granted a huge parcel of land as a reward. At one time Hope Estate extended from the sea to the hills in Newcastle. In the 17th and 18th centuries Hope was a sugar estate one of the first where water (from the HopeRiver) was used to turn estate mills. The Hope Aqueduct (which can still be seen at HopeGardens, MonaHeights and Mona Road) was built for that purpose. In 1766 Richard Elletson Hope arranged for Kingston to be supplied withwater from his estate, but after his death, his wife remarried a British Duke and cancelled the water concession. Kingston lost its water supply. In the 1840s the duke's son sold the city of Kingston 234 acres of the estate bordering on the HopeRiver. Kingston's water was eventually drawn from this land as part of a publicly owned system.
The 200 acres of Hope Estate land that eventually became HopeGardens (and one of Jamaica's few public parks) in the late 1870s-early 1880s includes a Palm Avenue where sago palms are among the oldest living trees, a cacti garden, a bougainvillea walk, a maze, a forest and lily pond. Other attractions include a zoo, a lake, a fountain, military band concerts and even a poet's corner. There is also what remains of CoconutPark. When Queen Elizabeth II came to Jamaica in 1953, the gardens were officially renamed the Royal Botanical Gardens. The Gardens have been undergoing repairs since 1996.
These gardens, along with Fern Gully in St. Ann and Holland Bamboo Grove in St. Elizabeth, are maintained by the Ministry of Agriculture's Public Gardens Division (927-1257). They are used regularly in photo shoots and to provide educational programmes designed to expose students to general gardening practice. Crop management and botanical information can be obtained on request and some plants are also available for commercial sale
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