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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”
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
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
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Chippingham Road, off West Bay St
Nassau Bahamas, the
+1 242 323 5806 |
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Ardastra Gardens