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In a move to attract tourists, the Chandigarh administration will upgrade and refurbish the Rose Garden in the Union Territory. As reported by UNI, the administration has chalked out a plan that focuses on addition of new varieties of exotic flowers and developing landscaping of the Zakir Hussain Rose Garden, Asia’s largest rose garden. Sanjay Kumar, Finance Secretary, Chandigarh expressed the need to renovate the Rose Garden with new concepts by repositioning and changing of flower beds to arouse curiosity among the residents and visitors.

The Union Tourism Ministry has already sanctioned Rs 2.69 crore for the Rose Garden which would mainly be utilised for purchasing new rose varieties, development of rose nursery, mesh and angle design for periphery, tourist information centre cum gift shop, installation of tube well, signage and concrete edging of beds.

A major chunk of the sanctioned amount will be used in installing fountains and illumination of the garden to augment night tourism. Need for services like good restaurant, public conveniences, garden map and garden history have also been chalked out for encouraging visitors in the garden.

Concept sections like roses named after great world personalities, roses with unusual names, exclusive section of unique roses, roses named after countries and fruits will be added to the Garden. Efforts are further being made to develop a section ‘Pride of India’, with exclusive collection of varieties evolved in India. There is a plan to have beds with amusing and interesting slogans. Kumar suggested the creation of a bank of fast rose varieties that would save more than a year in preparing a plant. Keeping in mind the fact that for major part of the year there are no roses, in order to keep alive the interest of visitors, some landscaping features with ground cover plants is being considered. Provisions for having a small children’s corner with child-friendly attractive swings and slides is also envisaged to make the garden interesting for children.