A good deal of attention was paid to rendering the soil of the colony garden fertile, as well as deep.  In its shallowest places it exceeded a foot in depth, and in the deepest, spots where natural fissures had aided the drill, it required four or five feet of materials to form the level.  These deep places were all marked, and were reserved for the support of trees.  Not only was sand freely mixed with the mud, or muck, but sea-weed in large quantities was laid near the surface, and finally covered with the soil.  In this manner was a foundation made that could not fail to sustain a garden luxuriant in its products, aided by the genial heat and plentiful rains of the climate.  Shrubs, flowers, grass, and ornamental trees, however, were all the governor aimed at in these public grounds; the plain of the crater furnishing fruit and vegetables in an abundance, as yet far exceeding the wants of the whole colony.  The great danger, indeed, that the governor most apprehended, was that the beneficent products of the region would render his people indolent; an idle, nation becoming, almost infallibly, vicious as well as ignorant.  It was with a view to keep the colony on the advance, and to maintain a spirit of improvement that so much attention was so early bestowed on what might otherwise be regarded as purely intellectual pursuits which, by creating new wants, might induce their subjects to devise the means of supplying them.

The governor judged right; for tastes are commonly acquired by imitation, and when thus acquired, they take the strongest hold of those who cultivate them.  The effect produced by the Colony Garden, or public grounds, was such as twenty-fold to return the cost and labour bestowed on it.  The sight of such an improvement set both men and women to work throughout the group, and not a dwelling was erected in the town, that the drill did not open the rock, and mud and sand form a garden.  Nor did the governor himself confine his horticultural improvements to the gardens mentioned.  Before he sent away his legion of five hundred, several hundred blasts were made in isolated spots on the Reef; places where the natural formation favoured such a project; and holes were formed that would receive a boat-load of soil each.  In these places trees were set out, principally cocoa-nuts, and such other plants as were natural to the situation, due care being taken to see that each had sufficient nourishment.

The result of all this industry was to produce a great change in the state of things at the Reef.  In addition to the buildings erected, and to the gardens made and planted, within the town itself, the whole surface of the island was more or less altered.  Verdure soon made its appearance in places where, hitherto, nothing but naked rock had been seen, and trees began to cast their shades over the young and delicious grasses.  As for the town itself, it was certainly no great matter; containing about twenty dwellings, and otherwise being of very modest pretensions.