The St. Vincent botanical garden has a long history, being the oldest in the Western hemisphere, with talks about its establishment dating to June 1765, two years after the country was ceded to the British as part of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763.

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The Island came under the control of the British War Office, and effectively was a garrison; Fort Charlotte on Berkshire Hill began construction in 1763 and provided a base for the military, although militia were stationed in various parts of the island.

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The governor of territories ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Paris was General Robert Melville (d.1809), who visited the island meeting with Dr George Young (d.1803), the surgeon of the island’s military hospital. Melville suggested the establishment of a botanic garden that would provide medicinal plants for the military to help the British troops stay healthy enough to retain control of an Island that, under a treaty in 1660 between the British, French, and the Caribbean indigenous people, left the island solely for the Indigenous population. Melville ordered six acres of previously delegated military land to be set aside for this purpose, and instructed Young to get information about indigenous medicines from “all quarters” of the island and to obtain “physical practices of the country, [from] natives of experience and even old Caribs and slaves who have dealt in cures” even if this had to be paid for and was “against [his medical] craft.”

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No financial aid from London was forthcoming to support the Garden, despite its obvious colonial and military benefits, but the War Office and the East India Company helped by supplying plants and seeds, and Young drew on his own contacts too. In 1773, Young produced a list of plants in the Botanical Garden which the naturalist John Ellis (d.1776) noted were “the most useful plants, …in time [to] become profitable articles of commerce.”

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The medical knowledge was to become vital to the British because between 1769 and 1773, the First Carib War was fought. British encroachment into Carib territory was met with local resistance. Despite larger forces, the British were unable to defeat the, then-called Carib fighters. Beset with “extensive sickness among the soldiery” eventually a treaty was negotiated that brought an end to the conflict. Notably, of the initial 2,273 British soldiers involved in the flighting, by May 1773, 72 soldiers had been killed and 80 wounded in the fighting, while 110 had been killed by disease, and 428 were sick – it was in effect the poor health of the troops that led to their requirement for a truce.

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In 1779, St. Vincent was captured by the French and until 1783, when the Island return to British rule, it was in French hands. During much of this time the garden was developed by the French, but once they realised they were losing the island, it was largely neglected. And when Young returned to the Garden in 1784, he found it badly deteriorated, with parts cultivated by local people who were growing cotton and tobacco.  Given the scale of the restoration, Young suggested that the superintendentship be handed over to someone else, and he recommended Alexander Anderson (b.1748).