By Express News Service
SRINAGAR: Signaling the arrival of spring and the start of Kashmir’s tourist season, Asia’s largest tulip garden in Srinagar will open to visitors on March 23, featuring 15 lakh Tulips of different colours. “We have planted early, mid, mid-late and late varieties of tulips to ensure that the tulip garden remains open for a month and it remains a point of attraction for the visitors,” Farooq Ahmad Rather, Director of Floriculture, said.
Besides tulips, the garden, spread over an area of about 30 hectares, has Muscari Daffodil, Hyssen and other types of flowers to attract the visitors. The opening of the tulip garden signals the arrival of the tourist season in the Valley and travelers from across the country and abroad throng Srinagar to see the different varieties of tulips.
Assistant Floriculture officer tulip garden Inam-ul-Rehman said 68 varieties of tulips of different colours will bloom in the garden this year. Of the 68 varieties, seven are new, he said.According to Inam, a record 2.25 lakh people visited the tulip garden last year and the number could have been much higher but the garden had to close for 10 days due to a surge in Covid cases.
The flow of visitors to the garden spikes last year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted about it.A day before its opening on March 25 last year, the prime minister posted a beautiful collage of the tulips on Twitter.
