botanical gardens

DRAGON’S blood, hanging crab claws and giant fishtails surround me, heightening my senses – although I’m in an environment far more calming than these strange horticultural names might suggest.

Working my way through acres of palms, I brush past scarlet ginger lilies, fragrant frangipani and a tree offering trailing black berries, which my guide Coady describes as ‘Bob Marley’s dreadlocks’.

I’m in St Lucia’s Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens (diamondstlucia.com) – six acres of horticultural exotica and a Unesco world heritage site, featuring a natural gorge with health-enhancing waters.

This is where dragon’s blood, a striking deep red sedum, provides creeping ground cover. Spiky red flowers with yellow tips give the illusion of suspended crab or lobster claws, and huge palms mimicking giant fishtails form part of the exotic planting within this tropical landscape, part of the 2,000-acre Soufriere Estate.

Coady points out wafts of lemon grass, which make a great alternative to regular mosquito repellent if you rub the leaves on your skin, as well as St John’s Bush, which is said to ease menstrual cramps, and the aptly named tree of life, which apparently aids the immune system and helps reduce cholesterol.

Further on, we reach the Diamond Waterfall, not the most imposing at 50ft high, but whose therapeutic mineral-laden cascades have tinted the rocks a blend of yellow, green and purple. It is served by sulphur springs upstream, its mineral-rich volcanic waters spilling over the rockface.

While you can’t swim at the foot of the falls, hot spring baths nearby should satiate anyone’s desire to take a dip. It is said that bathing here aids rheumatism, respiratory complaints and ulcers.

Volcanic soil is the key to the lushness of this Caribbean island, situated between Martinique and St Vincent and to the northwest of Barbados, its richness and tropical