From Kew to the Caribbean: How Walter Broadway Flourished Despite Garden Politics

May 3, 1863

On this day, Walter Elias Broadway entered our verdant world – a man destined to become one of Kew's most accomplished gardeners and an unrivaled authority on West Indian flora.

While His Majesty King George V would eventually recognize Broadway's horticultural contributions, one cannot help but delight in the more colorful aspects of his career – namely, the delicious tension with his supervisor John Hart and a fondness for spirits that extended beyond the botanical variety.

In 1888, Kew dispatched our ambitious gardener to Trinidad and Tobago, bestowing upon him the rather grand title of Assistant Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden. One imagines his chest swelling with pride at such an appointment!

Initially, paradise seemed to have embraced young Broadway. The islands offered a veritable Eden of tropical splendors, complete with an established botanic garden and herbarium. His task? Merely to absorb every minute detail about tropical flora without so much as a comprehensive reference guide. A trifling challenge for a man of his talents, surely!

Alas, Broadway's eagerness to secure plant identifications directly from Kew and the British Museum proved his first misstep in the delicate dance of colonial botanical politics. His superior, the evidently territorial Mr. Hart, swiftly demanded all collected specimens pass through his hands first – a classic case of horticultural gatekeeping if ever there was one.

The situation deteriorated further when Hart, perhaps envious of Broadway's boundless enthusiasm, commanded him to abandon his beloved field expeditions in favor of garden maintenance. One can almost hear the collective gasp of sympathetic botanists everywhere!

Did our intrepid plant hunter surrender to despair? Certainly not!

Broadway, displaying the resilience of the hardiest perennial, cultivated alternative passions. He immersed himself in Trinidad's rich history, developed an insatiable appetite for entomological specimens, and helped establish the Trinidad Field Naturalists' Club. Despite Hart's constraints, Broadway perfected the art of plant collection with undiminished fervor.

When the opportunity arose to escape Hart's shadow as curator of the Botanic Gardens in Grenada, Broadway seized it with the swiftness of a Venus flytrap. It was here that he shrewdly began collecting for private herbariums – not a venture that filled his coffers with gold, but one that certainly eased his perpetual financial straits.

After more than a decade in Grenada, Broadway ventured to neighboring Tobago. By 1908, fate had intervened – Hart had been unceremoniously forced into retirement.

One imagines Broadway allowing himself a small, satisfied smile at this news. Liberated from his former oppressor, he resumed collecting with renewed vigor, even sending moss specimens to the esteemed Elisabeth Britton.

By 1915, Broadway had come full circle, returning to Trinidad where his tropical adventure began. His explorative spirit undiminished, he continued venturing into the island's remote corners, forever hunting botanical treasures.

Broadway retired in 1923, choosing to spend his twilight years in Trinidad – the island that had thoroughly enchanted him. His passion for the natural world remained steadfast until the end, as he perpetually sought novel or intriguing plants to offer his private clientele.

Though scandalously excluded from the 1928 Flora of Trinidad and Tobago, Broadway's legacy proved impossible to erase – the work's citations bristled with references to his collections.

The botanist Andrew Carr captured Broadway's essence perfectly when he remarked:

"an exceptionally fine man. Entirely unselfish in spirit, he was always ready to share his vast knowledge of the botany of the island with other interested persons. I shall never forget his joy at discovering a new species of moss in a drain in Oxford Street. He was regarded, and justifiably so, as a walking encyclopedia on the botany of these parts ..."

Today, as the Trinidad & Tobago annual flower show bestows the Walter Elias Broadway Memorial Trophy for exceptional foliage plants, one cannot help but wonder if Broadway himself is observing from some celestial garden, perhaps raising a glass in celebration – and keeping a watchful eye for any new species growing between the heavenly paths.