A decades-long member of the Garden Club of Grand Cayman, Berna Cummins is passionate about preserving native species.
She is a recent past-president of the club, an office she’s held twice, and is one of the key figures in the organisation.
“The Garden Club was founded in 1957 and my mother joined in 1958 and often hosted meetings in her garden,” she says. “It seems I’ve been a part of the Garden Club all of my life.”
Her own garden in South Sound has not only been Berna’s pride and joy throughout the years – it has also given her the chance to help save the island’s plants.
“I strive to grow indigenous plants and trees,” she says. “I often take cuttings from the wild in an effort to preserve them for future generations as we lose so many through development.”
Hurricane Ivan all but wiped out Berna’s garden, although it also allowed her the opportunity to play her part in conservation.
“After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, I started replanting, as only four palms survived,” she says. “All the rest of my garden was destroyed. I started from scratch and planted whatever was available to purchase, but mostly I went into the bush and collected local, indigenous plants.”
Berna designed the 0.75-acre garden herself and planted it with the help of her gardener, describing it as eclectic in style, from traditional to rare plants and trees.
“It is a living work-in-progress,” she says. “I’m always on the lookout for the new, the endangered, the rare and exotic.”
MIXTURE OF PLANTS
The garden features a mixture of flowers, trees and vegetables, requiring daily maintenance of watering, fertilising, weeding, pruning and pest control.
Berna likes a lot of colour, and so plants flower beds beneath most of the trees.
“I have a large bed of Caymanian roses and hibiscus, and hybrids of both,” she says. “I grow pentas, periwinkles, marigolds, ixoras, coleus, orchids, miniature and large heliconias of many varieties.
“But, my pride and joy is the white bird of paradise and its display of exceptionally large flowers. I also grow mussaenda, bougainvillaea, Mexican sunflower, ginger lilies, rice and peas, Brazilian firecracker, clerodendrum and a variety of desert roses.”
Berna’s collection of trees includes ylang ylang, cassia, Hong Kong orchid, mahogany, jacaranda and quick stick.
Fruit trees include bananas (lacatan and apple), plantains, bottlers, soursop, sweetsop, star fruit, mangoes, guava, avocado, otaheite apple, papaya, cherries and monstera deliciosa.
Other edible plants are Cayman mutton peppers, various herbs and fever grass.
GREEN THUMB
Berna, who co-owns the hardware store A. L. Thompson’s with her brother Al, credits her parents Alfred Lawrence Thompson and Corinne Thompson for her ‘green thumb’.
“My dad grew the edible, and my mom grew the beautiful,” she says.
In 1978, Berna started a garden section at the George Town store and then in 2015 greatly expanded it to what is now the Outdoors yard and garden department at A. L. Thompson’s. This greatly increased access to plants, equipment and accessories for gardeners across the island.
Describing herself as now “mostly retired”, gardening remains central to Berna’s life, spending almost every morning in her South Sound sanctuary.
“It is my quiet time,” she says. “My time to enjoy the beauty nature offers me each day after my Devotions.”
And when not at her Cayman residence, Berna can be found at her summer home in Maine, where she also has a magnificent garden.
This article appears in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of InsideOut magazine, now available at magazine stands and delivered to select homes.
