Proud of the city I am living in, Bogor, as it has what people call one of the biggest botanical garden in Asia, as it covering an area of 87 hectares (210 acres) green land, with additional 28.4 hectares (70 acres) of the ground in the north-west being the palace garden. (according to Wikipedia).
Founded in 1817 during the government of the Dutch colonial, contains 13,983 different kinds of trees and various plants divided in groups of garden collection;
- Gunting Pond
- Dutch cemetery
- Araceae Garden
- Teijsmann Garden
- Water Garden
- Medicine Garden
- Mexican Garden
- Soedjana Kassan Garden
- Orchids
- Amorphophallus titanum
(I include the Wikipedia links if you are interested to know more)
I visited this garden first time with my (late) Father and sisters, in the late 1980’s, but it still came clearly in my mind, how happy I was back then, enjoying the large garden, felt exciting about the water ponds as I saw the water lily flowers for the very first time in my life, getting scared crossing the famous red hanging bridge (for a small me, that bridge really frightening to walk with-need my Dad’s hand to cross it) 🙂
Been a number of times since then, I came back and visited the garden. Still doesn’t feel much different from the past. Though lately I noticed that most of the landscape is poorly managed. Yesterday I barely near the Dutch cemetery, as I feel so creepy even to get nearby it. Haha silly me.
The one that still excite me are the nice view of Bogor Presidential Palace and the open green space in front of the cafe there. Me and my friends there to survey for our next event with other larger group of friends. If I’m not lazy I will update it next month here 😆
For many local people in Bogor and Jakarta, it is still a good nice place for a change of view and getting city forest atmosphere whilst doing family picnic or event gathering.
Unfortunately this interesting garden is poorly managed, the plants seems not well taken care or trimmed properly. And though nowadays the awareness to keep public tourism place clean is higher, yet still there are ignorant who dump waste everywhere when visiting this botanical garden.
My main concern would be the map signage to explore the garden itself, the painted words and images almost gone, hardly reads what’s on it. (Below is the only map that still good to read). They should’ve gave every tourist a printed mini map exactly like this when they enter the Bogor Botanical Garden (Kebun Raya Bogor).
I once read on foreign tourist review about this Bogor Botanical Gardens and one suggest to have a local official guide for people who visits this garden, it is a very great idea, as I still see many international tourist coming and explore this Bogor botanical gardens.
Bogor Botanical Gardens or Kebun Raya Bogor (Indonesian) is located in West Java, Indonesia, about 2 hours away from downtown Jakarta capital city. Best to come to this place is at earliest in the morning, to enjoy the fresh morning breeze and avoiding traffic, more best if you can come on weekdays outside holidays.
