Sample Louisiana flora, fauna at Avery Island’s Jungle Gardens

Photo By Chuck Cannon | Alligators are one of the viewing favorites at Jungle Gardens.  

FORT POLK, LOUISIANA, UNITED STATES

04.12.2019

Story by Chuck Cannon 

Fort Johnson Public Affairs Office

AVERY ISLAND, La. — Throughout history, men have worked to build gardens for the delight of their subjects or Families. From the hanging gardens of Babylon in Iraq to the Chateau de Versailles in France, kings, queens and other rulers used gardeners and slaves to tame nature and create beautiful landscapes of flora and fauna to surround their palaces.
One such “king” was Edmund McIlhenny, a food lover and avid gardener who called Avery Island in south Louisiana his home. Avery Island sits atop an 8-mile deep dome of salt on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.
In the 1860s, McIlhenny, a banker by trade, was given pepper seeds from Mexico and Central America. He planted the seeds near his home, fell in love with the spicy flavor of the peppers they bore and decided to try his hand at creating a pepper sauce.
Using the reddest peppers, he mixed them with Avery Island salt and aged the mash for 30 days. He blended the mash with French white wine vinegar and aged the mixture for another 30 days. He bottled the mixture and tried it out on family and friends.
McIlhenny’s sauce proved so popular that he decided to leave the banking business and make pepper sauce full time. He labeled the sauce “Tabasco,” received a patent in 1870, and soon after became recognized as the king of pepper sauce.
Tabasco Pepper Sauce is still made much the same way McIlhenny first made it. His relatives continue the tradition by continuing to grow tasty peppers on Avery Island.
Tabasco Pepper Sauce is labeled in 22 languages and sold in more than 160 countries. It is included in Soldiers’ rations and adorns the tables of the finest restaurants in the world. Visitors to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island can watch as the pepper sauce is bottled, labeled and packed off for shipping.
After a tour through the Tabasco factory, a stop at the company gift shop is a must. There you’ll find the Tabasco label on just about everything you could imagine.
You’ll also have a chance to sample Tabasco-flavored ice cream, soda and chili. Oh, and don’t leave without trying a bowl of jambalaya — Tabasco style.
After dining on such delicious fare, what’s needed is a good walk. Just across the road from the Tabasco compound is another contribution from the McIlhennys to Avery Island — Jungle Gardens. Rivaling the gardens built by European and Eastern monarchs, Jungle Gardens, founded in the 1890s by Edmund McIlhenny’s son, E.A. McIlhenny, was created to support another McIlhenny creation — Bird City.
E.A. McIlhenny founded the ornithological colony — home to thousands of snowy egrets — after plume hunters slaughtered the bird to near extinction. The younger McIlhenny gathered eight young egrets, raised them in captivity on Avery Island, then released them in the fall to migrate across the Gulf of Mexico. The next spring the birds returned — with a few friends — and the migration continues today.
The 250-acre Jungle Gardens and Bird City attracts visitors from all over the world. Along its shaded paths and trails are azaleas, Japanese camellias, Egyptian papyrus and other botanical treasures. When oil was discovered on the island in 1942, E.A. McIlhenny made sure production crews bypassed the stately oak trees and buried their pipelines.
In addition to the vast array of plant life, visitors can see alligators, turtles, deer and raccoons. An unexpected treat in the middle of the Louisiana marsh is a Chinese garden, including an 800-year old Buddha overlooking a lagoon — a gift to E.A. McIlhenny in 1936.
Admission to Jungle Gardens is $8 for adults, $5 for children ages 5-12 and free for children 4 and under. A combination for both the Jungle Gardens and Tabasco Visitors Center is $12.50 for adults and $9.50 for children ages 5-12 and free for children 4 and under. Tickets to the visitors center are $5.50 for everyone, children 4 and under free. Veterans, active duty service members and seniors age 55 and above receive a 10 percent discount.
The gardens are open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Tours of the Tabasco factory are Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The factory is closed on major holidays.
There is a $1 toll road charge to enter Avery Island.
For those who want to get a firsthand look at the production of Tabasco Pepper Sauce and visit Jungle Gardens, a trip to Avery Island is only about a three-hour drive from Fort Polk. Take U.S. 171 south to I-10. Head east on I-10 and take exit 103A in Lafayette. Follow U.S. 167 south and U.S. 90 east about 20 miles to La. Hwy 14. About a mile down the road, turn onto La. Hwy 329, go about five miles and you’re there.
For more information call [phone] or visit www.TABASCO.com.

• Date Taken: 04.12.2019
• Date Posted: 04.12.2019 10:02
• Story ID: 317885
• Location: FORT POLK, LOUISIANA, US