Zugdidi Botanical Garden (Zugdidi)

 interesting place, botanical garden

A vast botanic garden designed by the Italian landscape architect Joseph Babini. It included an orangery, a labyrinth, a plant nursery, a hothouse, and a man-made lake, and was stocked with exotic plants imported from all over the world, including one of the world’s finest rose collections. Shortly after its planting in 1840, this remarkable garden won first place in a competition to select the finest examples of park design in the Russian Empire.

A grand guest house was situated in the botanic gardens. An 1848 visitor describes a pair of beautiful staircases leading to two ballrooms on the top floor, both decorated with ornamented black and yellow wooden ceilings, chandeliers, and sculptures. The whole structure was surrounded by illuminated balconies, their columns interspersed with woven wood ornaments.

Mengrelian Prince David Dadiani ordered the construction of the botanical garden for his wife, Ekaterine, who personally supervised all aspects of the planting. After the gardens were vandalized by the retreating Ottoman forces in 1855, Ekaterine wrote a sorrowful letter to her advisor Platon Ioseliani that read in part: „Zugdidi is no longer. The garden there—the product of sixteen years of labor, which was commendable not only in this area of the Caucasus but in foreign countries as well—has been erased by the enemy. All fruits, flowers, and plants from foreign countries [are gone;] some were taken away, and some cut down.”

However, Ekaterine was determined to restore the park; it was gradually replanted, and much of its old charm eventually was restored. However, after Ekaterine’s death in 1882, her son Niko largely neglected the Zugdidi residences and their gardens. In 1886, the newspaper Iveria wrote: „It is reported from Zugdidi that, although the town is laid out according to plan [and] there is a boulevard with trees lining it on either side, lately it cannot boast of cleanliness and refinement. David Dadiani’s garden was the beauty of the town—a garden without peer not only in Samegrelo, but in the whole of the Caucasus. But where is this large garden now? Even its shadow has disappeared. It has now become a thick forest, in which instead of men, wolves, jackals, and other beasts reign supreme, so that after sunset a human dare not enter it.”

Today, although the plants are tangled and overgrown and the walls are crumbling, it is still just possible to imagine the splendor and serenity of the gardens in their day. The area around them remains adorned with trees brought from India, Japan, Italy, and North America.