Hakgala Botanical Garden is one of the five

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

s in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. The other four are Peradeniya Botanical Garden,

Henarathgoda Botanical Garden Henarathgoda Botanical Garden, also known as Gampaha Botanical Garden, is one of the six botanical gardens in Sri Lanka. The botanical garden is situated on the Gampaha-Minuwangoda main road, approximately away from Gampaha railway station. It i ...

Mirijjawila Botanical Garden Mirijjawila Botanical Garden is one of the five botanical gardens in Sri Lanka. The other botanical gardens are Peradeniya Botanical Garden, Hakgala Botanical Garden, Henarathgoda Botanical Garden and Seetawaka Botanical Garden. Location Miri ...

and

Seetawaka Botanical Garden Seethawaka Botanical Garden, or Seethawaka Wet Zone Botanic Garden is a botanical garden located in Sri Lanka which mainly serves as a research area and a conservation area for threatened and vulnerable endemic plant species in the Sinharaja Rain ...

. It is the second largest botanical garden in Sri Lanka. The garden is contiguous to

Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve is one of the three strict nature reserves in Sri Lanka, the only one in the wet zone. The reserve is an important although isolated cloud forest which supports a number of faunal species including some endemics. The ...

Location and climate

Hakgala Botanical Garden is situated on the

Nuwara Eliya Nuwara Eliya ( si, නුවර එළිය ; ta, நுவரெலியா) is a city in the hill country of the Central Province, Sri Lanka. Its name means "city on the plain (table land)" or "city of light". The city is the administrativ ...

Badulla Badulla ( si, බදුල්ල, ta, பதுளை) is the capital and the largest city of Uva Province situated in the lower central hills of Sri Lanka. It is the capital city of Uva Province and the Badulla District. Geography Badulla is ...

main road, 16 km from Nuwara Eliya. The garden has a

cool temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

because of altitude is 5,400 feet above sea level. The mean annual temperature ranges between 16 °C to 30 °C during the course of a year. Abeywardena 2004: pp. 344-45 From December to February it has a cold climate, while the warm climate persists from April to August.

History

The garden was established in 1861, under

George Henry Kendrick Thwaites George Henry Kendrick Thwaites (9 July 1812, Bristol – 11 September 1882, Kandy) was an English botanist and entomologist. Thwaites was initially an accountant and studied botany during his spare time. He was interested particularly in the lo ...

as an experimental cultivation of

Cinchona ''Cinchona'' (pronounced or ) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae containing at least 23 species of trees and shrubs. All are native to the Tropical Andes, tropical Andean forests of western South America. A few species are ...

, a commercial crop thriving at the time. Once after the

Tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northe ...

replaced the

, it was turned into an experimental Tea cultivation. In 1884 it transformed into a garden. Since then many subtropical and some temperate plants were planted in the gardens.

Folklore

In the

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

s, it says Sri Lankan demon King

Ravana Ravana (; , , ) is a rakshasa king of the island of Lanka, and the chief antagonist of the Hindu epic ''Ramayana'' and its adaptations. In the ''Ramayana'', Ravana is described to be the eldest son of sage Vishrava and rakshasi Kaikesi. He a ...

after abducting

Sita Sita (; ) also called as Janaki and Vaidehi is a Hindu goddess and the female protagonist of the Hindu epic, ''Ramayana''. She is the consort of Rama, the avatar of the god Vishnu, and is regarded as a form of Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi. She ...

, kept her hidden in this area and area was offered to Sita as a pleasure garden, the place finds mention in the

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...

Ashok Vatika Ashoka Vatika was a grove in Lanka that was located in the kingdom of the Rakshasa king Ravana, as mentioned in the Vishnu Purana and the Hindu epic ''Ramayana'' of Valmiki, and all subsequent versions, including the ''Ramacharitamanas'' written b ...

.Tracing evidence of Lord Ram and his times
''

Zee News Zee News is an Indian Hindi-language news channel owned by Subhash Chandra's Essel Group. It launched on 27 August 1999 and is the flagship channel of the Zee Media Corporation. The channel has been involved in several controversies and has ...

''. The area was named as "Sita Eliya" and " Sita Amman Temple" was built on the site.

Visitor attraction

There are over 10,000 species of flora planted here and during the

Spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

season in Nuwara Eliya thousands of visitors come to see the blooms here. The number of annual visitors is around 500,000. The garden is famous for number of

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

Orchids Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

and

Rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

s are planted there.

Notes

References

* {{Nuwara Eliya , state=collapsed Nuwara Eliya District Botanical gardens in Sri Lanka 1861 establishments in Ceylon