Asia’s largest tulip garden in Srinagar is now open for public

With Spring on, The Tulip Garden located below the Zabarwan Hills and overlooking the world-famous Dal Lake, is looking no less than a floral wonderland. The Floriculture department is also planning a Tulip festival in the month of April. And the gardeners are making sure that most of the tulips bloom before the opening of the Garden.

”Tulip Garden is an internationally recognised garden and it plays an important role for the tourism sector in Kashmir Valley. We always try to add new attractions to the garden every year and this time too we have added floral surprises this year. We have introduced new vibrant color schemes with five new varieties and apart from that we have added daffodils and hyacinths. 1.7 million tulips will be blooming in the garden this year”, said Asif Ahmad Itoo, Floriculture Officer.

Hundreds of gardeners and staff are working day and night to ready the garden for the Public. It takes around 6 months to get the garden ready and huge planning is done much earlier before the opening of the garden. And this year the floriculture department says all the previous records of tourist footfall will be broken.

The Tulip Garden has become extremely famous to people across India. A lot of travellers plan their travels to the valley during the Tulip bloom. This year the floriculture department has planted other varieties of flowers like hyacinths, daffodils, muscari and cyclamens to make the garden look more colourful.

”We have had overwhelming tourist footfall last year, The garden opens for a month and we saw 3.72 lac visitors last year and this year we are hopeful that we will break all the previous records this season. Our planting pattern depends on the blooming period and we have given a schematic planting of these tulips this year in coming years we will make sure that the garden’s longevity expands and from next year onwards we will have cherry blossoms and the garden will be kept open during the month of May as well,” said Asif Ahmad Itoo, Floriculture Officer.

The Garden was made in 2008 by the then Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad. The garden was made to attract more tourists to the Valley during the Spring Season. Last year the garden was included in the World Book of Records (London) as Asia’s largest Tulip Garden.