Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden

The Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden (sometimes shortened to the SSR Botanical Garden), commonly known as the Pamplemousses Botanical Garden, is a popular tourist attraction near Port Louis, Mauritius, and the oldest botanical garden in the Southern Hemisphere. The garden was first constructed by Pierre Poivre (1719 – 1786) in 1770, and covers an area of around 37 hectares.

These gardens, for a long time ‘ranked third among all the gardens that could be admired over the surface of the globe’, have been known successively as ‘Jardin de Mon Plaisir’, ‘Jardin des Plantes’, ‘Le Jardin National de l’Ile de France’, ‘Jardin Royal’, ‘Jardin Botanique des Pamplemousses’, ‘The Royal Botanical Gardens of Pamplemousses’, ‘The Royal Botanic Gardens, Pamplemousses’. On 17 September 1988 the garden was formally named “Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanic Garden”.

While the garden is most famous for its giant water lilies, the garden features spices, ebonies, sugar canes as well as 85 varieties of palms from Central America, Asia, Africa and the islands around the Indian Ocean. Many trees have been planted by world leaders and royalty, including Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, Indira Gandhi, François Mitterrand and Robert Mugabe.

These gardens are situated in the village of Pamplemousses which lies about seven miles North East of the Capital, Port Louis. Pamplemousse or “Pamplemoucier” is a form of grapefruit tree – Citrus x paradisi, which grows in the region and possibly introduced by the Dutch from Java.