CRANBROOK Flower Forest and River Head Adventure Trail, a unique Jamaican eco-tourism attraction in the green hills of Laughlands, St Ann, is moving progressively towards increasing its offerings.

This 130-acre attraction, said to be ideal for nature lovers, weddings, family reunions, corporate fun days and educational tours, is located 18 miles west of the resort town of Ocho Rios.

Of the total acreage, the property devotes 40 acres to landscape, boasting exotic tropical gardens, lawns, pools and a tropical rain forest.

Manager Lawrence Madden told JIS that plans are afoot to expand the Cranbrook Flower Forest, as well as establish a fruit forest, growing a variety of exotic fruit trees and, hopefully, be able to offer exotic fruit production, especially to the tourism trade.

“We are also going to venture into growing vegetables, a whole range of herbs and spices, and all these will be packaged under the Cranbrook brand,” Madden said.

He said that a recent establishment was the Cranbrook Nature Centre, which is a registered charity, designed to serve as part of the Cranlin Farms Limited’s (owners of Cranbrook Flower Forest) thrust of education and outreach for locals and visitors.

“It will assist those youngsters in high school who are doing their School Based Assessments (SBA), and we welcome them to come and study the forestry, to learn about how to care for the environment, how to do river training and, at the same time, enjoy recreation and work with the water and water systems,” he said.

He also noted that Cranbrook would be partnering with the Jamaica 4-H Clubs to train young people in understanding nature and becoming nature lovers.

Other agricultural plans, he said, should see the plant nursery at Cranbrook expanded to include not only flowering plants and ornamentals, but a wide variety of tree crops.

He stated that the nursery will look at seedlings production that can enhance its backyard and school gardening programmes, as well as its commercial production of vegetables and root crops.

“We are moving to make this facility into an agro-tech learning centre and a centre of excellence for production, where you will learn how to care for the environment so the environment can care for you,” Madden said.

He said that bee rearing was yet another agricultural activity being carried out at the property, and that future plans should see Cranbrook working in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) and the Jamaica 4-H Clubs to utilise the production.

“What you will see happen now is that we will be able to provide employment, because we want to attract a number of these graduates who are coming out of the College of Agriculture Science and Education (CASE) and Ebony Park HEART Academy, so that we will have knowledge-based workers among us,” he told JIS News.