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October 31, 2022

A Trip to The Spice Farm & Botanical Gardens

Last week our friend and neighbour very kindly lent us her car, so we took the opportunity to visit the Belize Spice Farm and Botanical Gardens, an enclave of over 500 acres where you can explore an amazing array of orchards, spice gardens, and flower gardens.

Founded by Tom and Tessy Mathew of Bluefield, WV who vacationed in Belize in 1989, they found it to be remarkably similar to their childhood home of Kerala in India. 

Starting a Spice farm in Belize seemed so enticing, Mathews decided to jump in and give it a try. Many years ago, Nutmeg was introduced to Grenada and Cardamom to Guatemala with great success. So, the idea to do something similar was very tempting. With the help from the Government of Belize, Mathews imported Black pepper, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Clove and vanilla to Belize. Most of these plants adopted their new home and thrived. Over the years the Spice farm expanded to become a Botanical Gardens by adding a fruit Orchard with exotic fruit trees, an aquatic garden with Lotuses, water lilies from Thailand and Gigantic Victoria Amazonica native to Brazil.

spice farm trees

Table of Contents

    • Where It Is
    • Entrance and Dining Area
    • The Tour
    • Teak, Rosewood & Mahogany
    • Orchard
  • The Spices
    • Vanilla
    • Cacao & Coffee

Where It Is

The Spice Farm and Botanical Gardens is located in the largely rural Toledo District in Southern Belize, approximately an hour and forty minutes drive from our village in Placencia, or 70 miles (114 km) on the Southern Highway. If you’re travelling from Belize City, it’s just over three hours.

The scenery on the way there was lush and beautiful.

road trip mountains
road trip bridge

Entrance and Dining Area

Upon arrival, we immediately noticed how tranquil and beautiful the entrance was,

spice farm building
spice farm building2

and even more breathtaking inside. These photos definitely don’t do it justice. The building is made of beautiful Teak. It’s an open plan dining room/bar that manages to create an intimate feel for dining for two while being large enough to cater for various functions, including weddings.

spice farm dining

Lots of beautiful, large windows that circulate cool air throughout the room,

spice farm windows

ornate Floor

spice farm floor

and an outdoor area too.

spice farm outdoor area

The Tour

We were greeted by our tour guide, Cornelio, who was both friendly and knowledgeable with a sense of humour. Since there were only two of us, this was our chariot for the duration.

spice farm golf cart

For larger groups, they use this buggy

spice farm buggy2

We were taken through this beautiful bougainvillea arbour

spice farm archway

Along a strip road that had leaves imprinted into it

spice farm road leaf

Looking around, I mentioned that this would be a wonderful place to spend a few days. With that, Cornelio informed us that they were, in fact, building a few cabanas as we speak! I’ll definitely be back for those. It’d be the perfect place to spend a tranquil weekend.

Just past the bougainvillea arbour, these beautiful lotus flowers on our right

SF lotus
SF lotus2

I’ve never seen lotus flowers before and I had no idea that they were so tall.

On our left, these Gigantic Victoria Amazonica. They reminded me of one of my favourite books growing up called The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher by Beatrix Potter.

spice farm lily pads

Teak, Rosewood & Mahogany

First stop – Teak trees. Teak is one of the faster growing hardwoods (half an inch per day). Still, it takes 20 – 25 years to grow into ONE mature tropical tree to final harvest. Cornelio informed us that The Spice Farm & Botanical Garden has their own sawmill for cutting trees and making furniture and they chop the trees every 20 years or so.

spice farm teak

They also grow mahogany and rosewood, which are endangered in many countries. Cornelio estimated this mahongany tree (the very tall one at the back) to be about 63 years old.

SF mahogony tree 63 years old

Orchard

Next up, the orchard. There is a huge variety of tropical, exotic and Indian fruits grown in the orchard. Experience the aromas and flavors of Surinam cherry, lychee, star apple, avocado, tropical blackberry, and tamarind.

Cornelio picked a Rambutan Lychee for us to taste. The Rambutan Lychee is funny to look at, but very tasty.

lychee

The Spices

We continued down the country road to the spices,

SF road to spice trees

passing beautiful Heliconia varieties along the way

SF bird of paradeise
SF bird of paradise crab claw

and the national flower of Belize, the beautiful and delicate Black Orchid. Stunning.

black orchid
black orchid
black orchid2

The smell of spices fills the air. About 50 to 60 acres are used to grow peppercorns, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, curry, tropical oregano, turmeric and more. Native spices, like cow foot, also grow here. Cow foot smells like licorice and is used to flavour meats. Cornelio stops every few metres to pick leaves and get us to smell and taste them, all the while explaining how to cook with them as well as their medicinal uses.

SF nutmeg
SF pepper
PEPPER
curry
CURRY
allspice
ALLSPICE
cardamom
CARDAMOM

Vanilla

I had to write a separate paragraph about the Vanilla as I had no idea how difficult it was to produce. I learned that it’s the second most expensive spice in the world – the first being Saffron. Bean to bakery, it’s about an 18 month process.

vanilla pod

When vanilla begins to bloom in the summer months, farm workers at the Belize Spice Farm have only a six-hour window to pollinate the crop. They have six acres to cover and they do it all by hand, using toothpicks. If they’re too late, they’ll have to wait until the next flowering season because it blooms only once every year. Harvest would be in November or December, and it takes about a whole year before they market them.

The farm pollinates by hand because the female part of the flower is covered, which makes it difficult for bees or hummingbirds to do the job. To get around that, farmers use toothpicks to manually move pollen from the male part of the flower into the female part. Once pollinated, the flowers produce green beans.

The labor requirements of vanilla don’t stop at hand-pollination. You can read more about this process in this article.

The farm workers attach the vines to a tree called madre de cacao. The trees deter many bugs from getting at the crop and provide necessary shade.

vanilla vine 1

If your eyes are not glazing over yet – read on!

Leaving the spice area, were the pepper vines – 10 acres – sold widely across Belize and also exported to other countries. As you can see, the vines are growing up other trees.

SF pepper 1

Cacao & Coffee

On the way to the Cacao and Coffee trees, we passed a field of palm trees – dwarf palm, cat palm, pindo palm, fan palm, Christmas palm, foxtail palm, Bismarck Palm, to name to a few.

SF palm field

Fragrant Jasmine

spice farm jasmine

and a Banyan Tree. These trees are often used to meditate under. The story of the Banyan is the story of one’s life – continually growing stronger roots and reaching new heights, expanding wide into the world and taking up all the space it was meant to. 

spice farm banyan tree

I was surprised to see coffee growing there and it reminded me of another coffee farm (and a winery and orchard), Bodega Las Berrazales, that we’d visited in Gran Canaria earlier this year.

sf cacau and coffee

Cornelio opened a cacao pod and asked us to try the jelly-like substance surrounding the seed. It was very slimy which put us off a bit. But, I like to try different foods, so I popped one in my mouth. Sweet and delicious! “This is the “candy” of my childhood,” he said.

sf cacau pod
SF cacua fruit

On the way back to the main building, we drove down a road lined with beautiful flowers

spice farm road lined with flowers

and then we came to a bridge where they hold the wedding ceremonies. The idea is for the bride to walk across the bridge over a sea of lotus flowers and then say “I do” with the flowers and bridge as a backdrop

SF lily bridge

Back at the dining room, we were served a delicious lunch – I had curry chicken, mashed potatoes and vegetables, and Michael had teriyaki pork chops.

spice farm lunch

Afterwards, we spend a little time shopping.

spice farm spices

All in all, it was an incredible and pleasant experience. I had no idea about some of the processes the spices go through before they get to our table. Definitely worth going and I can’t wait for the cabanas to open so we can spend a weekend there.

For information about all their tours, visit their website.

Posted In: BELIZE · Tagged: belize, bodega de las berrazales, coffee in gran canaria, spice farm and botanical gardens

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