Alpine Botanical Garden

If you are an active tourist, and you want to see the most interesting places while in Adjara, be sure to add the Alpine Botanical Garden to the list of the must see attractions. The road to the garden, stretching for 115 km, will fill your camera’s memory card with amazing and colorful pictures of the mountainous Adjara: the abundance of evergreen vegetation, rivers, waterfalls and rural houses.

The Alpine Botanical Garden is located on the high plateau of the Adjarian Mountains, in the Khulo municipality, at an altitude of about 2,000 meters above sea level and 3 km from the Goderdzi pass. The best time to come to the Alpine Botanical Garden is from mid-May to mid-October. During the rest of the year, there is a lot of snow here, sometimes reaching a height of 5 m.

The Goderdzi Pass is part of the Trans-Adjarian highway connecting Adjara and Samtskhe-Dzhavakheti. In summer, green alpine meadows cover the mountains with a soft carpet, and these places become very picturesque and lively: more vehicles travel on the road, local kids sell pine gum, cows graze, springs splash over rocks, and the sky is very close. The surroundings of "Goderdzi" are also known among geologists by the fact that there is a fossil forest here, which history goes back to deep antiquity.

Walking through the Alpine Botanical Garden, you can see a lot of interesting things. Firstly, here, on an area of ​​almost 10 hectares, there is a collection of wild plants of the subalpine and alpine zones of Adjara: 50 families, 111 genera and 161 species of flora. In addition, there is an original rockarium - a composite, stone garden, interspersed with endemic vegetation, occupying an area of ​​4,000 sq. / m. and a small lake nearby.

One of the attractions of the Alpine Botanical Garden is the Honey House. It was built to popularize the traditional Georgian beekeeping with the use of “dzhara” - a wooden beehive for the bee domestication of the most ancient way. In the Honey House you can see the main attributes of traditional beekeeping, as well as acquire the necessary beekeeping skills.

If you want to stay longer in nature, breathe the purest mountain air and watch beautiful panoramas of mountainous Adjara, you can pitch a tent and stay in the garden for several days.

Location: Khulo municipality, Shkernali
Distance: 115 km from Batumi
Best time to visit: 15.05 - 15.10
Working hours: Summer - 09: 00-20: 00; Spring-Autumn - 09: 00-16: 00
The entrance is free