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History of the Ardastra Gardens and Zoo |
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 In
the begining
Ardastra Gardens was
first opened to the public in 1937. It was the brain child of Hedley
Vivian Edwards, a Jamaican horticulturalist, who wanted to create a
luscious garden here in the heart of Nassau. This was not an easy task
as the area in those days was more of a marshland than a lush garden. He
named it the Ardastra Gardens after the Jamaican defense force motto,
Ardastra, which came from the latin, Ardua astrum, literally meaning
“Striving for the stars”.
The flamingos
In the 1950’s flamingos
in the Bahamas were nearly hunted to the point of extinction. The
Government at that time brought flamingos to Ardastra Gardens as an
experiment to try breeding them in captivity. The breeding was not very
successful but the flamingos certainly became quite an attraction in the
gardens. Mr. Edwards then decided to begin training the flamingos to do
a march for his guests and they have been marching ever since. The
flamingos were featured in the National Geographic magazine in the
October 1957 issue as nobody had trained flamingos to be comfortable
around people before and so people could come closer to the flamingos in
Ardastra compared to anywhere else in the world.
The first zoo in the Bahamas
In 1982 the gardens were bought
by Mr. Norman Solomon, a Bahamian, and it was then that the first zoo in
the Bahamas was born.
Source: former official site of
Ardastra Gardens & Zoo (2010)
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