The Royal Botanic Gardens!!

This photograph was taken at the Botanic Gardens in Port of Spain. The amazing Royal Botanic Gardens are located to the north of Trinidad, in Port of Spain. It was established in 1818 and is one of the oldest gardens of it's kind found in the West Indies. The gardens display over 700 trees, of which 13 percent are indigenous to Trinidad. It also has 200 species of orchids. The area also contains a small cemetery reserved for the governors of Trinidad and dates back to as far as 1819. A botanic garden is a protected natural urban green area. An organisation creates landscaped gardens and holds collections of living plants which are all documented and filed. There are stores of plant accessions containing functional units of heredity of actual or potential value for purposes of conservation, scientific research, tourism, education, public display, recreational activity and sustainable uses as well as the production of marketable plant based products and services. Urban geography talks about the effect of green spaces. Green spaces allow for many advantages some of which are, improving air quality, reducing energy consumption by countering the warming effects of paved surfaces, reducing temperatures in the area, and it can also aid in the natural aesthetic beauty of the city. Trees can improve air quality as they remove smoke, dust and other pollutants from the air. One tree can remove up to 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. This is the equivalent to 11,000 miles of car emissions. Trees also allow for shade. This temperature of the area under a shaded tree is much cooler than areas where there is no shade. The natural vegetation adds beauty to the environment as when the trees flower they carpet the area with multicolored flowers. Below is a video taken from Youtube showing the country's national flower, the Chaconia, found in The Royal Botanic Gardens in Port Of Spain. 

Reference : 

Bailey, Liberty Hyde &  Bailey, Ethel Z. (1978).Hortus Third, New York: Macmillan.

"Environmental Benefits - Project EverGreen ." Home - Project EverGreen . http://projectevergreen.com/why-green-matters/environmental-benefits/ (accessed March 10, 2013).

"Botanical garden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_garden (accessed March 10, 2013).