Peradeniya Botanical Gardens

Originally created in the reign of the Sinhalese King Wickramabahu III during the 14th century, these gardens were improved by his successors and later by the English after their conquest of Kandy.

Marianne North in 1876 during her visit to the island befriended and wrote about the then director, Dr G. H. K. Thwaites, who with his great acquirements and steady devotion to science, gave a world wide reputation to the Gardens during his tenure of office from 1849 to 1880. “He had planted half the trees himself, and had seldom been out of it for forty years, steadily refusing to cut vistas, or make riband-borders and other inventions of the modern gardener”, she remarked with astonishment. The trees were massed together most picturesquely, with creepers growing over them on a natural and enchanting tangle.

Here is a great gallery by Alex Meeres: http://www.pbase.com/alexjet/garden