Tour Guide Training

In September 2025 I was in St Vincent at the Botanical Garden to present at a symposium with staff from Kew Botanical Gardens who were over to help with training, and then to initiate a programme of tour guide training.

Tour guides preparing for training on the history and heritage of the St Vincent Botanical Garden, September 9th 2025 (c) Welch 2025

This training was for accredited tour guides and was to provide them with additional information on the history and heritage of the Garden. Bolstering their knowledge base would not only feed into their own confidence but help them develop their own personal approaches to imparting information on St Vincent and the Grenadines to tourists, many of whom wish to visit the Botanical Garden.

This initial session was for 25 guides and as much as imparting knowledge to them, was a way for me to assess what might be needed in the future. The idea is that I would do this initial training in-person and then develop an on-line session. Once tour guides feel confident in their own knowledge base, then can then take over the training ensuring sustainability into the future. They each received a training pack of a 16-page document which includes images of extracts from historic documents from, and/or about the Garden, its plants (including the Breadfruit) and people connected with it such as enslaved Africans, Mazaran and John Tyley who will feature in future blogs. They were also given a map of the Garden dating to c.1806 and a link to this website which has lots of further information, and my contact details in case they had questions.

Once the Guidebook is published then they will be able to draw on, and extend the information provided there. And feedback from the session was positive with tour guides welcoming the opportunity to have someone to ask questions of.

Importantly, Mr Jaysi Nash, technical director of the Garden, noted the importance of tour guides not taking off leaves or flowers from the plants. The preservation of the flora requires a hands-off approach such as that practiced at Kew. It is hoped that talking about the plants, and their history, will help change current practice. Without doubt visitors love to be able to smell a crushed leaf, but if lots of guides take leaves, then this eventually causes harm to the plant. If visitors hear that the species was growing in the Garden in the late-1700s and brought in from Grenada or Guiana, then they may be happy to just look. It is hoped the tour-guide training will help centre plant-information but of course old-habits die hard so only time will tell.

Tour guides with Mr Nash listening to feedback and engaging with plants

(c) Welch 2025