The Batumi Botanical Garden is situated along the Black Sea coast, 9 kilometres from Batumi.
The park covers an area of 113 hectares.
Preparatory work for the creation of the park began in the late XIX century.
In 1881, the French landscape gardener Mécislas d’Alphonse (1856–1898) purchased a plot of land measuring 35 desyatinas (approximately 38.2 hectares) in what is now the Lower Park.
It was largely thanks to him that exotic plants such as cypresses, palms, and magnolias became established in Batumi.
However, the garden was not officially opened until November 3, 1912.
Its founder is considered to be the Russian botanist, geographer, and professor at Kharkiv University, Andrey Nikolaevich Krasnov (1862–1915).
He chose this location because of Adjara’s unique humid subtropical microclimate, which receives up to 2,500 mm of precipitation annually and is ideal for acclimatising plants from different parts of the world.
In the 1890s, under his direction, two major botanical expeditions were conducted to Southeast Asia.
Various valuable plants were brought back to Russia as a result, including tea (Camellia sinensis).
In accordance with his will, Andrey Nikolaevich was buried on the grounds of the Batumi Botanical Garden – a monument was erected at his grave on the garden’s 50th anniversary.
Today, the botanical garden’s collection includes around 1,800 taxonomic units of woody plants (according to various estimates, as many as 2,000–5,000 species and forms in total), of which approximately 90–100 are of Caucasian origin.