In 1902, 12 years after it was started, F. Sterns-Fadelle, a local planter, wrote of the Dominica Botanic Gardens, “The good taste displayed in its arrangement, and the scrupulous care bestowed on it, render this suburban resort a most attractive one, and our diligent curator has in this respect also deserved well of all lovers of the picturesque. It is not vast, like the prater of Vienna, nor gorgeously ornate, like Battersea Park, but ours is indisputably the most charming recreation ground in the West Indies, not excepting the beautiful tended gardens of Georgetown, Demarara.” F. Sterns-Fadelle. Dominica: A Fertile Isle. Dominica, 1902.

    Aspinall, writing in 1907, said, "The Botanic Garden is without a doubt the chief attraction of Roseau. Established in 1891, it is picturesquely situated at the foot of the precipitous Morne Bruce, and occupies 40 acres of what was previously Bath Estate, which adjoins it. .... The garden is the most luxuriant and beautiful of its kind in the West Indies. It contains specimens of almost every known variety of tropical plant, both economic and ornamental." Aspinall also noted that an official guide to the garden could be purchased. Algernon Aspinall, The Pocket Guide to the West Indies, Methuen, London, 1954 Edition.

    In 1950, Fermor, who had travelled throughout Europe and the West Indies, describes the gardens as follows, "A shady road, running along a wall like that of an English park, led out of the town for about half a mile in the direction of the hills, and a gate opened into the most beautiful botanical gardens I have ever seen. Lawns as perfect as the most ancient and august in England rolled in gentle slopes shaded by clumps of enormous and, for me, still unknown trees, except for another banyan under whose convolutions I lay for an hour or two …. Next to it a huge cannon ball tree every now and then loosed off its ammunition, which fell with a dull thud upon the grass." Patrick Fermor, The Travellers Tree, Murray, London, 1968 Edition.