Iris Bannochie (1914–1988) was a Barbadian

horticulturalist Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

who was the leading expert on

horticulture Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

on the island of

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

Life

Iris Bradshaw was born in

Grenada Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...

in 1914 of Barbadian parents and apart from her early childhood, lived all her life in Barbados. She married Harry Bayley in 1935 (the founder of the Bayley Diagnostic Clinic, Beckles Road and memorialised in the Harry Bayley Observatory at Clapham). She worked very closely with her husband Dr. Harry Bayley building the Bayley Diagnostic Clinic and taking on the roles as Hospital Administrator and Laboratory Technologist. Iris Bayley was a self taught scientist and published the definitive description of the unique embryology of the whistling frog which has no tadpole stage. Harry Bayley was seeing in his hospital lots of very sick children and discovered in a lot of cases "the child had caught a cold and was given Bush Tea to make them better". Iris was dispatched to investigate Bush Teas in Barbados. Her research is still widely quoted. It showed that most "Barbados Bush Teas" were highly toxic and could kill children. She also published research on the vitamin C content of the Barbadian cherry. She was a founding member of the Barbados National Trust, Chairman of the Parks and Beaches Commission (and its successor the National Conservation Commission) and for many years President of the Barbados Orchid Circle and the Barbados Horticultural Society (BHS). She travelled the world collecting exotic and beautiful plants and led the BHS in repeatedly winning gold and silver medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London and International Flower and Orchid shows. In 1977, she was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr ...

for her contribution to tropical horticulture. In 1952 with her husband Harry Bayley they designed and built their bay-house Andromeda on of land in

Saint Joseph According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph (; ) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. Joseph is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Eastern O ...

that had been in her family since 1740. Andromeda was situated on a hillside overlooking the rugged east coast of Barbados with

Bathsheba Bathsheba (; , ) was an Kings of Israel and Judah, Israelite queen consort. According to the Hebrew Bible, she was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, with whom she had all of her five children. Her status as the mother of Solomon ...

to one side and Tent Bay the other. The Bayley family commenced developing Andromeda Gardens in 1954. It started off as Iris Bayley's private botanical garden with

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s and

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. This is because of Earth's ax ...

trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only p ...

. The garden was formed around the bed of an ancient stream, surrounded by giant coral stone boulders. This was the inspiration for the house name, after the legend of the Greek maiden Andromeda, daughter of King Cepheus of Ethiopia (she was chained to a rock as a sacrifice to save her country from a monster and was rescued by Perseus who killed the monster and married her). Iris Bayley's husband Harry Bayley died suddenly on 14 June 1958. In 1964 she re-married John Bannochie and together they continued to develop Andromeda Gardens. Andromeda Botanical Gardens 11

Bannochie suffered a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

in the summer of 1988 and died shortly afterwards. She was 73 years old. On Bannochie's death, Andromeda Gardens was left to the

Barbados National Trust The 'Barbados National Trust'', founded in 1960, is an organisation which works to preserve and protect the natural and artistic heritage of Barbados and to increase public awareness of the country's historic and architectural treasures. These in ...

. A heliconia

cultivar A cultivar is a kind of Horticulture, cultivated plant that people have selected for desired phenotypic trait, traits and which retains those traits when Plant propagation, propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root a ...

is named after Bannochie – '' Heliconia stricta'' 'Iris Bannochie'.

References

External links

Photograph of Heliconia stricta 'Iris Bannochie'
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bannochie, Iris Women horticulturists and gardeners 1914 births 1988 deaths Veitch Memorial Medal recipients Grenadian emigrants Immigrants to Barbados 20th-century botanists 20th-century women scientists Horticulturists