Batumi Botanical Garden

Foundation date: 1881

Working days: Monday-Friday

Opening hours: 09:00-18:00

Status: Protected by the state

Area: 113 hectares

The Botanical Garden in Batumi occupies a total area of 113 hectares. The Botanical Garden is located 9 km from Batumi, near the railway station. It was one of the largest botanical gardens in the USSR. After the creation of the Soviet Union in Georgia, the Batumi Botanical Garden continued to develop, and on July 30, 1925, the Soviet National Committee approved it as a scientific institution of the USSR.

At the beginning of the 19th century, it consisted of nine floristic divisions: Transcaucasian humid subtropical, New Zealand, Australian, Himalayan, East Asian, North American, South American, Mexican and Mediterranean. The collection of natural plants includes more than five thousand species of plants, including about two thousand species of trees and shrubs. The Botanical Garden has five scientific departments: plant introductions, floriculture and ornamental horticulture, tropical plant breeding, plant ecology and biochemistry. The Batumi Botanical Garden was headed by the Georgian Academy of Sciences, but since 2006 it has become an independent institution.

The botanical garden was created gradually and for different purposes. In 1881 the Frenchman De Alfo created a small exotic garden, the Interior Garden, to create a beautiful garden from which the Botanical Garden begins. Then, in 1892, geographer Pavel Tatarinov, in the company of the Inner Garden, created another garden, which botanists called “Botanical” – this is the modern Upper Garden. The main part of the park was created by the famous Russian geographer Pavel Krasnov, brother of the White Guard general. In 1912-1914he managed to acquire land and money to begin large-scale work on growing plants. He was the first to grow tea and Australian eucalyptus to dry the swamps.