Garden of the Groves, Freeport: trails, waterfalls and a hilltop chapel

Why go

Freeport’s casinos and shopping sit a short drive from a much quieter attraction: a botanical garden built around winding trails, running water and a small hilltop chapel. The Garden of the Groves¹ is Grand Bahama’s main nature stop in town, the kind of place you walk slowly rather than tick off a list, and it works equally well as a half-day break from the beach or as a stop before a flight out of Freeport.

The garden takes its name from Wallace and Georgette Groves, the couple behind the founding of Freeport itself, and the chapel that crowns its highest point has become one of the island’s favourite wedding settings, consecrated and still used for ceremonies today¹.

What you will see

Paths wind through dense, planted vegetation, crossing bridges and skirting a series of cascading waterfalls and fountains¹ before climbing to the little white chapel pictured on this page. The garden holds a wide variety of native and exotic plant life², planted dense enough that it draws a steady traffic of birds and butterflies through the grounds, which is as much the draw here as the architecture.

Within the garden sits the Grand Bahama Labyrinth, a walking meditation path. It is built as a recreation of the ancient sacred labyrinth laid into the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France in 1201, following the same sacred-geometry pattern, and it is open to visitors of any faith² to walk during the garden’s normal visiting hours.

Visiting: hours, admission, booking

The facts box on this page shows the garden’s daily opening hours. Admission runs between $3 and $15², the exact price set by the visitor’s age and the size of the group, so budget toward the upper end if you are visiting alone as an adult.

If you want to walk the labyrinth with a facilitator rather than on your own, those walks run on a set weekly schedule rather than continuously; the garden also hosts a short weekly meditation session there. Check current days and times with the venue before you go, since the garden’s long-standing official domain is no longer a reliable source: it has been taken over and now serves unrelated content, so do not trust search results that point there.

Getting there

The garden sits at the corner of Midshipman Road and Magellan Drive in Freeport Lucaya, a short taxi or rental-car ride from central Freeport and from the Freeport docks. Grand Bahama’s own airport, served by domestic carriers including Western Air, is close enough to the town that the garden works well as a last stop before a flight.

Nearby

Grand Bahama’s other big nature outing is further east: Lucayan National Park, covered on the Bahamas things-to-do page, pairs its underwater cave system and bird life with the Garden of the Groves for a full day spent away from Freeport’s resort strip.