Hi Everyone!!

The Miriam C Schmidt Botanical Garden is located on the small Caribbean island of St Eustatius (Statia). Miriam Schmidt was a local woman and a founding member of St Eustatius National Parks (STENAPA.) Concerned with the preservation of Statia’s nature she had a vision to create a safe haven for the island’s flora where the issues of invasive species such as Corallita and the damage from roaming animals could be controlled. She campaigned for many years and eventually secured a lease from the local government for the land the garden now stands on and got volunteers in place to start the fencing and clearing.

            A little over ten years on it is now a flourishing, beautiful space. However, Miriam never got to see the garden in all it’s glory, she passed away in 2001 and the garden was renamed after her, honouring her contribution and dedication to the project.

            Now the garden is managed by STENAPA. I am the lucky person who gets to call the garden her office and I manage the day to day running of the garden and organize, oversee and participate in all the maintenance and development here. We are staffed mainly by volunteers, usually one or two interns who work exclusively at the garden and up to eight volunteers every two months.

            Our mission is ‘Preservation, Conservation, Education’ and we take this very seriously. A huge amount of our work is involved in the preservation and conservation of Statia’s unique flora. We also work hard to educate the youth of Statia, the public and visitors about the island’s nature, the importance of horticulture and about gardening in the most environmentally aware way you can. We promote this by setting the example, reusing and recycling all that we can and using no chemical pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers.

            This blog will be an account of what is happening at the garden. Whether you were an intern or a volunteer for STENAPA, visited the garden when on holiday, you live on Statia or even if you have a keen interest in gardening and horticulture there should be something to interest you here. We will post pictures of projects that we have been working on and show how gardens are developing. We will give you updates on Foxy, our garden dog… yep he’s still going strong and any other information that people want to know about.

            You can leave your feedback and requests here, or email us at statiabotan@gmail.com, we would love to hear what you think.

Much love from the garden on the golden rock…

Claire Blair