Established in 1765, St Vincent Botanical Garden (SVBG) was among the earliest tropical gardens in the world, and the first in the British colonial Caribbean. Dr Alexander Anderson (1748-1811), a Scottish surgeon and botanist, served as SVGB’s superintendent during its early development, from 1785 to 1811. Anderson was a man of his time: educated, inquisitive, and keen to make a name for himself. Travelling widely in the Caribbean, he recorded plants new to western science, introduced many plants into SVBG, documented the uses of various plants and exchanged observations, information and plants with many significant gardens and botanists of the time.