by Polly Pattullo and Anne Jno Baptiste
Illustrations by Marie Frederick and Nancy Osler

These four acres of nurtured wilderness lie at the head of the Roseau River valley, just below the Trafalgar Falls. Carved out of the rocky slopes, the garden, within which sits a guesthouse and restaurant, nestled in a canopy of tree fern and breadfruit trees, provides a green frame for the many "mini-environments" of the rainforest garden created by Anne Jno Baptiste.

There are intensive collections of begonias and bromeliads, aroids, heliconia, gingers and indigenous orchids planted in family groups and in ways which set off shape, colour and texture to best advantage. "They blend from nurtured collections into wilderness" says Anne Jno Baptiste and to the casual observer it just might be all "natural" such is the sense of luxuriance and tangled growth, yet it has been designed with great care and to great effect. The trails that now crisscross cold and hot mineral streams wind across the contours leading from one themed glade to another. It's a haven for bird and animal life.

Today's Papillote is the second incarnation of a garden that was first started in 1967 - with collections of ferns, mosses and orchids. This garden was destroyed in 1979 by Hurricane David when the whole valley was stripped of its soil and vegetation turning from lush green to brown and bare stone in a few hours. The high rainfall (around 200" per year), the rocky soil and the altitude (1000ft) means that the Papillote garden reflects its mini-climate. It constrains the gardener but also enriches the content of the garden by creating a homogeneous and coherent style. Constant attention has to be paid to erosion control, terracing, drainage and mulching to build up the soil. Support systems, such as old tree stumps, are never discarded; these become a second home for bromeliads, orchids and their communities as does the unique stone animal statuary dotted around the garden, each animal covered with a collection of mosses and fern. The sunlight filtered and sparkling through the controlled windows in the canopy falls upon plants comfortably suited to each spot.

Anne Jno Baptiste is committed to conserving indigenous species - she has rare aroids, such as the Philodendron giganteum and Anthurium dominicense, collected long ago from the rainforest, in addition to the endangered orchid, Epidendrum discoidale. She also experiments with other rainforest and tropical species keeping in close touch with international developments, exchanging seed and plant material from all over the world such as the surreal Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, a close relation of the giant Amorphophallus titanum which drew crowds of admirers to London's Kew Gardens when it flowered for the first time in 1995. The paeoniifolius at Papillote flowered in June, 1997. Another extraordinary plant that flowers at Papillote between January and May is the Strongylodon macrobotrys, the aquamarine Jade Vine, spreading its leaves on an overhanging powderpuff tree.

The name of the garden dates from the 1850's, the post-emancipation years. According to the written testimony of an elderly villager in the nearby village of Trafalgar, "...after slavery was over the master told his slaves to go out and build there house far out, they do, there was two of them go down to that land was Pappi and Alliotte." So this was no large estate, but the land of peasant subsistence farmers who have for so long been the backbone of the Dominican economy. The remnants of that era can be seen in the proliferation of breadfruit, papaya, cocoy, cacao and citrus.

Papillote today has a different style which incorporates the past within the green of the wilderness and the more recent developments of the last thirty five years. Essentially it remains a green garden integrated with the environment in a very special comer of the island.

Order The Gardens of Dominica direct from Papillote Press.