Green: Holland Bamboo heritage site restoration taking shape
Published:Monday | October 23, 2023 | 12:05 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Holland Bamboo Scenic Avenue in St Elizabeth has begun the last phase of a significant upgrading project to restore the iconic tourist attraction to its former glory days, with the planting of 5,000 bamboo plants.
The project, a collaboration between the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, was formally inaugurated in June of last year and received $8.5 million in TEF funds for the initial phase of rehabilitation.
Floyd Green, minister of agriculture, fisheries and mining, said the Holland Bamboo ecosystem was critical to St Elizabeth and that the scenic avenue, which is approximately four miles long, has for sometime been an iconic destination for tourists and Jamaicans, but it has deteriorated over time and has taken a beating from poor weather conditions such as climate-change.
“The Ministry of Agriculture is actually on a programme to replant the bamboo, and we’re planting 5,000 trees this year, and we’re on the final week of planting,” Green said on Thursday during a World Food Day celebration at Newell High School in St Elizabeth, with the theme, ‘Water is Life, Water is Food, Leave No One Behind’.
“We have a very important project on the way where we’re looking to revitalise Holland Bamboo,” the minister said.
“For those of you who are familiar with the iconic Holland Bamboo destination, you know that over the last few years, it has gone through a lot of challenges the weather has really done a deal on our iconic bamboo and we have lost a lot of the bamboo along the Avenue,” Green went on to say.
The original proprietors of Holland Estate planted the Holland Bamboo Heritage Site in the 17th century. It is a gorgeous arch-shaded highway made of the Bambusa Vulgaris bamboo species, which originated in India and is Jamaica’s biggest bamboo species.