Rainer Halama · File:Udhagamandalam-Government Botanical Garden-WUS05976.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Udhagamandalam-Government_Botanical_Garden-WUS05976.jpg
The Government Botanical Garden
Twenty-two hectares laid out in 1848 on the slope below the town, in terraces, with a fossilised tree trunk that predates everything around it by some twenty million years.
An 1848 garden on the hill slope
The Government Botanical Garden was laid out in 1848 by William Graham McIvor, a Kew-trained horticulturist brought south to make it, and it covers about twenty-two hectares on the lower slopes below the town. He built it in the Italian manner — terraces, lawns, ponds — and it has been added to ever since rather than rebuilt, which is why it reads as a nineteenth-century garden that is still working rather than a restoration of one. Every Ooty itinerary allows it an unhurried hour, and the ones that allow it two are the ones that got it right.
Explore The Government Botanical Garden on the map
City locations, drawn from our published destination data. Attractions, hotels and restaurants are not mapped yet.
What to look for
Five divisions, one very old piece of wood, and the terraces that hold the whole thing together.
The divisions
- The Lower Garden, with the long lawns
- The Italian Garden, which is the terraced part McIvor laid out
- The New Garden, the Conservatory and the nurseries
The fossil tree trunk
- A fossilised trunk set in the grounds, believed to be around twenty million years old
- Older than the garden by a margin that is difficult to hold in the head
Planting
- Beds of aster, balsam, begonia, petunia, pansy, phlox, cosmos and zinnia
- Perennials including salvia, delphinium, larkspur and dahlia
- Specimen trees through the older sections
Getting there
On the slope above the town centre, and reachable on foot from much of Ooty.
From the town
- A short drive up from the Charing Cross end of town
- Walkable from central Ooty if you do not mind the gradient
In an itinerary
- Every Ooty package pairs it with Doddabetta on the same morning
- It sits between the summit and the descent to Coonoor in the standard day
When to go
A garden is a season as much as a place.
Time of day
- Mornings are quieter and the light on the terraces is better
- It fills up through the middle of the day in the holiday months
Through the year
- An annual flower show fills the garden in the summer season
- Dates are set locally each year, so confirm them rather than planning around a fixed week
Worth knowing
How to use the time rather than spend it.
Walking it
- The terraces mean steady climbing and descending rather than a flat circuit
- An hour covers the main axis; two lets you take the upper sections properly
Photography
- The Italian terraces read best from the upper walks looking down
- The fossil trunk is easy to walk past — it is signed, but small against its setting
Close by
The rest of the standard Ooty morning.
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