AROUND BATUMI, GEORGIA
Here are the pictures just outside of Batumi, including the botanical gardens...

Go here for the pictures within the city of Batumi.

First, the Batumi Botanical Gardens, along the coast 5 miles northeast of Batumi...



You have to cross the train track to get to the main entrance...



The gardens are along the immediate Black Sea coast...



The railroad tracks below go along the coast (with a tunnel under part of the botanical garden)...



Definitely the subtropical look!



Didn't I take this picture in Vietnam? Nope...it's Georgia!



There's a New Zealand section of the garden (with New Zealand cabbage trees and flax)...



There's also an Australian section with many eucalyptus...



Large native chestnut (The blight doesn't kill as many of the European sweet chestnuts, Castanea sativa, seen here, as the American chestnuts).



Non-native kudzu was growing like crazy here (and at many other locations near Batumi)!



An employee of the gardens carrying a scythe!



In the back part of the gardens is some native temperature rain forest...





Native ferns...



Native rhododendrons (specially Rhododendron ponticum)...



A large European beech trunk surrounded by rhododendrons...



Now...to the south. There is a small town only a few miles from the Turkish border (or about 15 miles southwest of Batumi) called Kvariati...



The forested hills rise steeply from the ocean...



A small waterfall hidden in a lush wooded area only 100 feet away from homes and buildings...



Go here for Batumi, Part I.

All of the above pictures on this page were taken in September 2013 by Brandt Maxwell.

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