This year we celebrate the eighth year of Tropical Spice Garden.  It has been an amazing journey – transforming an overgrown derelict rubber estate into an award winning spice gardens – and has culminated in a few exciting projects during 2011, including our most recent endeavour, Tropical Spice Garden Cooking School.

The Cooking School inhabits what used to be our Museum. The Museum sought to bring to life the rich and turbulent history of the spice trade dating as far back as Roman times. We also had in place a colourful timeline of the ancient spice trade and a visual description of Penangs involvement in the spice trade.

Thankfully all these information boards are in the process of moving in to the gardens where visitors can still be brought back in time as they walk through the spice trails at Tropical Spice Garden.

Spice, food and Penang bloggers, Reese & Mark of Capturing Penang recently wrote a fabulous article for us connecting Tropical Spice Garden to the early development of the island by the East India Company in the late 18^th century.

The article also includes information of Penang’s first botanist Christopher Smith. And of course Penangs spice trade annuls would be incomplete without mention of the ‘Spice Islands’ of the Moluccas, home to the nutmeg and clove.

To learn more about Tropical Spice Garden’s connection to the Spice Route, click over to Capturing Penang for the story.

We look forward to welcoming more articles from Capturing Penang and Season with Spice in the future and we welcome them on board as official contributors to TSG blog and website.

Here’s to Penang and everything we have to offer…