Asia’s largest Tulip garden in Srinagar thrown open for public
15 March, Srinagar
Asia’s largest Tulip garden on the foot of Zabarwan hills, overlooking world famous Dal Lake in the heart of the summer capital, Srinagar, was thrown open for public Tuesday.”We opened the garden for general public today as the sun came out after wet weather conditions from last couple of days. Today 400 tourists visited the garden but we expect that over 1,000 people will come tomorrow as we have relayed the message to Travel agents and Hoteliers,” director floriculture Talat Parveiz said.
“Normally we open the garden for general public in April after 15 per cent of Tulips bloom. However, due to warm weather conditions this year, we were able to open to garden three-weeks early,” Parveiz said, adding that 30 per cent of the Tulips are in bloom so far while others are developing very fast.
Asserting that the garden will be thrown open in autumn on experimental bases, he said the department will sow few thousand Tulip buds and see if they bloom in that season.He said good number of tulips in different colours have already developed due to comparatively warm weather in February and March, adding tourists will be able to see 10 lakh
Tulips in the garden this year.The garden, which will have a million tulips in all prominent colours, was last year opened in the first week of April due to bad weather.The tulip garden has advanced the tourist season in the Kashmir valley by about two months as earlier tourists used to throng here in the last week of May every year.
However, this time despite less snowfall, tourists visited the Kashmir valley to see early blooming of Almonds due to dry and warm weather.At the foot of Zabarwan hills, the garden has become major attraction for tourists across the world besides locals and Bollywood as number of scenes were filmed in the garden in the past two years.
Several film units from South and Bollywood also shoot some film songs in the garden, brain child of then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, inaugurated by UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi on March 29, 2008.