Botanical Gardens – A Place To Relax

Acres and acres of undulating landscape filled with a dazzling array of colours. Vast stretches of green grass get dotted with carefully nurtured thickets, tall trees and pristine water bodies. Tread softly in the neatly manicured lawns and lose your path into a world of some rare plants, aromatic plants and also medicinal plants.

This is neither a poet’s imagination nor a depiction of a painter’s canvas. This is the true picture of the 120 Acre Hyderabad Botanical Gardens at Kothaguda near Hitec City, which is the first to come up in Andhra Pradesh.Botanical Gardens is established in Kothaguda Reserve Forest near Hitec City, jointly by the State Forest and Tourism departments, both as eco-tourism project and for growing plants for scientific, educational and aesthetic purposes. The Garden would comprise of all major varieties of Plant Kingdom and some rare species too. It was inaugarated on August 05, 2001.

Objectives of the garden include bringing diverse collection of plants from different habitats and establishing a gene bank, creating awareness among people about values of conserving plants, developing garden as a centre for recreation and developing facilities for research, particularly in medicinal plants. The garden has amenities like parking, cafeteria, ticketing booth, visitor shelter, seating benches, drinking water and toilet.

The Botanical Gardens serves as a sight seeing place providing scientific knowledge about different plants and trees to the visitors. After finishing a stroll in the Garden you will call the Neem plant as Azadiracta indica and Custard Apple as Annona squamosa. Almost all the plants in all sectors provided with nameplates having the common names along with scientific names.

Private Sector participation is approved by the Givernment in developing the Hyderabad Botanical Gardens. A memorandum of understanding is reached between Andhra Pradesh Forest Development Corporation (APFDC) and the city-based De Laraa Estates Limited. The MoU, singed as a `Design Build Finance Operate’ (DBFO) model, will have De Laraa investing Rs. 21.39 crores for developing various botanical sectors and species apart from visitor amenities in the 120-acre garden.

The Botanical Garden presently has five sectors and another 15 sectors including medicinal, ornamental, aromatic and zodiac plant sectors are to be developed. The amenities planned include stay facilities in the Live-in Nature sector, underwater wonders, water fountains, herbal health cure, amphitheatre, joggers bund, eco-club for nature lovers with fitness centre and children’s park. Efforts are on to identify, collect and grow some 5,000 different species of plants in different sectors of the sprawling garden.

Meanwhile, the APFDC has entered into an MoU with Trac India for developing a Night Safari Park alongside the Hyderabad Botanical Gardens and sent the Rs.60 crore proposal to the Central Zoo Authority.

SOURCES:
Hyderabad Best
AP Tourism
The Hindu