Meet Lionel and Lorilyn, the Antiguan Family Who Own LambLion Apartments

LambLion Apartments is owned and run by Lionel and Lorilyn Walker, a local Antiguan couple, and the first thing you learn when you stay is that the garden is theirs in every sense. He plants the food. She plants the herbs and the flowers. Guests eat from both.

I spent a long morning walking the property with them, camera running, microphone clipped to Lionel’s shirt. What follows is mostly their words. I only set the scene. If you want the short version, LambLion is 11 family run apartments in central Antigua, Green Globe certified, with a fruit and herb garden you are invited to pick from. The long version is better. More on the property is on the about LambLion page.

Who owns LambLion Apartments in Antigua? Lionel and Lorilyn Walker, a local Antiguan couple

Lionel and Lorilyn Walker own LambLion Holiday Apartments, and they live about five minutes down the road from it. Lionel grew up in Antigua and went to work straight out of school.

I grew up, went to school, left school, and when you leave school, it’s time for you to go get a job. You have to go to work to help your parents.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

He was soon carrying the household with his aunt. There were soursop and sugar apple trees in that yard already, and a few peas and eggplants when there was time. Then came marriage, and a house of their own.

We got married in eighty. We built a house in eighty six. And when we moved to our house, I had a kind of different outlook. Now you start to think about what you can plant in your own backyard.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

Their daughter lives in that first, much smaller home now. One of the coconut trees at LambLion came from there. And at LambLion itself, Lionel pointed to one tree and told me it was among the first things they ever planted on this land, about twenty years ago. It is still bearing.

Lionel’s ideal world is one where he never has to go to the shop

I asked Lionel if he thinks he is living in his ideal world. He did not hesitate on what that world would be.

My ideal world is where I wouldn’t have to go to the shop to buy anything at all.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

He is close. On some mornings, he told me, breakfast comes entirely from the land.

When you’re growing potatoes, we’ll have potatoes in the morning with spinach. Potatoes and spinach with some beans. So you have everything. Balanced breakfast meal.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

And the reason this plot grows so much more than his old one? He gave me a one word answer, then said it again for the camera.

It gets a lot more rainfall. And the rainfall is everything for the plants to grow.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

Lionel picks the coconuts and leaves the young ones on the tree

Standing at the foot of the ladder by the coconut palm, I watched Lionel choose which nuts to bring down. Not all of them. Never all of them.

I don’t pick all. I left them where they have got the shade, you know, so they don’t deteriorate as quickly.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

He knocked one on the ground to show me how you open it in the field when you have no cutlass. It took a while. He did not seem to mind.

It will come out faster, but you know you’re going to lose it. So you have to have patience. All these things teach you, teach you, teach you patience.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

Then he cut the cap off a green one with the machete and showed me how to drink straight from it. You set your lips around the edge to make a seal, tip your head and let the water run. Older, browner coconuts he keeps for grating, for sugar cake and for coconut dumplings, which is just grated coconut worked into flour, rolled and boiled. His wife does not take much sugar, so his version has none.

What fruit grows in Antigua? At LambLion, most of it grows in one garden

The fruit growing at LambLion includes mango, coconut, banana, papaya, soursop, custard apple, sugar apple, guava, breadfruit, cherry, golden apple, Jamaican apple, avocado and lime. I asked Lionel what to call the place, because it is not a farm. We settled on his word.

Food garden is good too, you know.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

Golden apple, if you have not met it, is the Caribbean name for ambarella, a tart green fruit that crunches like an unripe apple. Soursop is the big spiky green one with soft white flesh that tastes somewhere between pineapple and strawberry.

Bananas taught me the most. Lionel showed me a stand that started as one plant.

You can buy one banana plant and you can have a whole field of bananas, and maybe say ten, fifteen years from that one plant.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

Each banana throws up small shoots, called suckers, around its base. Once the main plant has fruited, a sucker takes over and grows the next bunch. Dig a sucker out and plant it elsewhere, and you have started another stand. He has given many away.

I wrote about picking from these trees on My Ideal World, and the full list of what I harvested is in the LambLion fruit, veg and herb harvest. The LambLion gardens page has more photos.

Lorilyn planted every herb in the garden

Lorilyn took over the tour at the herb beds, and the pace changed. She knows every plant by what it does in the kitchen. I asked if she planted all of it.

Yes, I planted everything.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Lionel had already put it more simply. Pointing at her flower beds, he told me, “This is my wife’s doing. She plants ornamental plants. She plants, I plant food.”

We started at the celery.

We use the celery a lot in our foods in Antigua and Barbuda. So we got the seedlings and we plant these. And as they grow, we pick the top. We cut the top and we use them in our foods.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Then spring onions she cuts at the base so they shoot up again, curly leaf parsley beside a flat leaf one, oregano, rosemary she had cut so it would spread, a patch of sage, and garlic she was drying in the sun.

Fever grass is what her grandmother called lemongrass

At the lemongrass, Lorilyn stopped.

My grandmother would call it the fever grass. And we’ll make tea with it.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Almost everything in her beds ends up in a cup. Balsam for a sweet, refreshing tea. Two kinds of mint, the mountain mint and the softer baby mint, which she gives to gassy babies. A whole patch of sage.

Most of our herbs we use for tea.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Anise seed is the herb she could not face as an adult

At the anise, she laughed.

My grandmother will use it in buns a lot when I was small. I had so much of it when I was small that after becoming an adult, I didn’t want to see it. Smell it.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Her grandmother was a baker. The anise grows here anyway. The birds or the wind carried the seed into the next bed and it came up by itself.

What is a traditional Antiguan breakfast? Lorilyn’s Sunday plate starts in the garden

A traditional Antiguan Sunday breakfast includes chop up, a cooked mash of eggplant, pumpkin and spinach, and in Lorilyn’s house the spinach comes from her running spinach bed.

Chop up is usually the eggplant. Maybe pumpkin and some spinach chopped together.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

The running spinach is a climbing green with big soft leaves. She cut some for breakfast two Sundays before I arrived.

This spinach doesn’t need much cooking, or cooking at all. You just saute it. I like it like that with my purple onions and some garlic.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

Green papaya gets the same treatment. In Antigua it is eaten unripe as a vegetable. Her grandmother boiled it. Now Lorilyn shreds it and sautés it with carrots, and her daughter makes it into coleslaw. There were fresh pigeon peas on the next bush, and she told me the more you pick them, the more they grow.

I asked how it feels to walk outside and take what she needs.

I feel special. But then my grandmother would do something like that. That’s how most of us grew up, who lived in the country. There was a backyard garden. There were papaya. There were eggplants.

Lorilyn Walker, owner of LambLion

I did not go to a supermarket once that week. I did not need to.

Guests become part of the garden at LambLion

Guests at LambLion leave things growing. The two tall mast trees grew from seeds a Grenadian guest brought while his wife worked in Antigua for a few years. A lime tree on the plot next door, which the family keeps clear, was planted by a guest from Canada.

This was planted by one of my guests who came to stay with us about six continuous years.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

They visited the tree on their last trip, and Lionel hopes to show them fruit on it next time. Some guests ask for the tour I got.

Some people say, you know, give me a tour. So sometime during the stay, they’ll want to come along with me and I’ll point out all the things.

Lionel Walker, owner of LambLion

He is building a guide to it all, too, in a spreadsheet with each plant’s scientific name, local name and medicinal use. His granddaughters, meanwhile, take care of the picking. “My granddaughters love to come and pick them,” he told me, about one of the fruit trees.

And the mangoes? Lorilyn said it plainly. “They love mangoes. The different types of mangoes.” Guests eat them straight from the tree, and the family freezes the pulp for drinks and ice cream.

LambLion is a Green Globe certified, family run stay

LambLion holds Green Globe certification, and the systems behind it are practical ones the family runs every day.

• Solar panels make up to half of the property’s daily power, and solar water heaters handle all the hot water.
• Rainwater harvesting, storage and wastewater recycling meet most of the property’s water needs.
• Garden and kitchen scraps are composted for the organic garden.
• LED lighting, motion sensors and energy saving appliances cut power use.
• A volunteer Green Team meets monthly to review progress and plan new ideas.

The details are on the LambLion sustainability page. Beyond the gate, LambLion employs people from the surrounding villages and supports Sea View Farm Primary School, including its Earth Day activities. Lorilyn is a member of the Antigua and Barbuda Horticultural Society, which holds plant sales and garden shows to fund its gardens, and she grows plants for them.

Staying with the Walker family feels like staying with relatives who garden

Staying at a family run property means you deal with the owners. Ask Lionel or Lorilyn where they shop, which beach suits your day, or how to arrange a hire car or an airport transfer, and you get a local answer. Lorilyn is often at the front desk. See the apartments and prices, from studios to two bedroom units, all with a kitchen or kitchenette.

For longer visits read medium term apartment rentals and the one month in Antigua guide. For the island beyond the resort strip, the guide to staying in Antigua without a resort covers it. My own review of the stay is on Hold The Throne.

Some places tell you about their garden. Here, Lionel hands you the coconut.

Our guide to holiday rentals in Antigua and Barbuda covers the apartments Lionel and Lorilyn built, the garden and the island around it.