Zugdidi Botanical Garden

Why go

In 1840, on taking power from his father, David Dadiani fenced off part of the woodland around the palace as its garden; he soon handed its care to his wife Ekaterine Chavchavadze, who brought in the Trieste gardener Joseph Babini to lay it out on a symmetrical French plan with an artificial lake and island that survive today. Ottoman troops destroyed the garden in 1856, during the Russo-Ottoman war of 1853–1856. Full restoration became possible from 1869, and in 1896 the brothers Gaetano and Giovanni Zamberletti from Varese enlarged the collection; the garden's history attributes the plane-tree alleys that still cross it to their time. The garden holds trees, shrubs and other plants from up to eighty genera, among them six species of magnolia, Atlas and Himalayan cedars and plants from Asia, the Mediterranean and the Americas. A reconstruction by the Municipal Development Fund began in February 2018. It sits beside the Dadiani Palaces Museum and the Blachernae church, which are separate sites.