The Lush Wonderland: Exploring Batumi’s Botanical Garden

What kind of fool goes to a Botanical Garden in the rain?

This one.

When inclement weather nixed my original plan of biking and beaching, I hopped onto a marshrutka (or, minibus) to explore Batumi’s Botanical Garden. The girl at my hostel recommended it heartily, and the rain seemed to have downgraded to drizzling in dribs and drabs, so I caught the #38 marshrutka and hoped for the best.

The ride there was easy—the marshrutka driver took pity on my inability to communicate and not only made sure I knew when my stop was, but also managed to point me in the direction of the garden’s front gate. Soon I found myself crossing long gray train tracks and entering Batumi’s lush, fabulous wonderland.

Batumi’s Botanical Garden is the largest in the former Soviet Union, and the primary location dedicated to the study of Caucasian flora and fauna. It was founded in 1912, and though it was previously run by the Georgian Academy of Sciences, it’s been its own entity since 2006. But it feels in many ways like a relic of an older time, a place that the world has passed by. The flora grows mad over every man-made thing.

Batumi’s climate is subtropical, and the morning’s rain left the air saturated with moisture. I felt like I was walking into some strange undiscovered jungle, with flowers bursting into bloom around every corner.

I climbed the Garden’s hills higher and higher, following the signs that indicated the main route. Eventually, the lush trees and ferns fields parted and I looked out onto the foggy Black Sea.

Every twist of the path pulled me deeper into the wild and dropped me in the middle of another ecosystem—seemingly every region of the world was represented. One minute, I was in a Japanese garden…

…the next, I was wandering through a bamboo forest…

…and eventually, I was deposited at a crumbly gate that stared out at the sea.

It was strange. The former grandeur was marred with graffiti; the sea itself was cut off by old winding train tracks. A view that could have been epic, revelatory—leaving the contained Botanical Garden to gaze at the sea—was instead circumscribed, cut off. I could see the main city in the shadowy blue distance, I could feel the heavy dark green leaves of the Garden hanging over me. All as I stood on train tracks, connecting the two. The juxtaposition of all these things was beautiful, somehow historical and alive at the same time.

I chatted with some girls working at the Botanical Garden who were shocked when I told them I was from the USA—they had never seen an American tourist there. Well, my fellow Americans, you’re missing out. Batumi’s Botanical Garden is mysterious, lush, and simply stunning. It’s pure Eden.