Fodor's Expert Review Batumi Botanical Garden

The same ideal growing climate that makes the Batumi region so green inspired 19th-century Russian professor and botanist, Andrei Krasnov, to found a botanical garden to rival any in Europe. Expanded during Soviet times, the garden now covers more than 110 hectares (275 acres), subdivided into landscape zones dedicated to the major botanical regions of the world: North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Mediterranean, Mexico, the Himalayas, East Asia, and of course the local Trans-Caucasian. Parks and nurseries anchor the north and south ends of the complex, while the west side looks high over the Black Sea.