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riginally part of the vast garden of the Dutch governor general’s mansion, the Bogor Botanical Garden, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary, has now become one of the oldest plant conservation centers in Southeast Asia.

It is not an overstatement when the head of the garden management Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Iskandar Zulkarnaen, describes the garden as one of the last bastions of Indonesia’s biodiversity conservation.

The garden, built by German-born botanist Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt in 1817, has been used to collect different species of plants from across the archipelago and the first seed-bed for foreign plants before being grown in Indonesian soil. Some rare plants have been cultivated there, such as Amorphophallus titanum known by locals as the “corpse flower” or the Rafflesia patma, which drew international attention in 2010 when it bloomed for the first time since 1930.  

The 200-year anniversary celebration should be a great opportunity for the garden management to relive the garden’s pioneering role during its “golden era” for research in the early 1900s with the study of auxins, growth hormones for plants, and the fungus mycorrhiza.

The garden was once the hotbed of innovative economic botany, which supported the development of plants for agro-industries in the past, such as oil palm, rubber, coffee, tea, quinine and tobacco.

The Bogor Botanical Garden should be preserved and conserved as a model for developing other conservation gardens in cities across the country. The maintenance of the conservation gardens is crucial given Indonesia’s valuable biodiversity and rich ecosystems. Therefore, LIPI’s target of increasing the number of city gardens to 47 from the current 33 by 2030 needs greater support from the central government, city administration and the public.

Today, the Bogor Botanical Garden plays a vital role not only for Bogor residents. An hour’s drive from bustling Jakarta, it serves as an oasis for those who thirst for open and green spaces. Between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors visit the park on weekends to enjoy outdoor activities in the garden’s shade.

These crowds, however, pinpoint chronic urban problems that the Bogor administration has to tackle, the absence of parking spaces, which leaves drivers of buses, cars and motorcycles with no choice but to park on the street, exacerbating traffic gridlock and poor trash collection, for example.

Earlier this year, Bogor Mayor Bima Arya Sugiarto widened 4.2 kilometers of sidewalks around the garden in a bid to boost the city’s ecotourism. This weekend, thousands are expected to turn up for the Kebun Raya Bogor 200 marathon, which includes a 36-hour race covering a 200-km route inside the vast garden.   

Such initiatives deserve praise and support, as they exemplify collaboration between the local administration and the public in reinstating the role of parks and gardens as the heart and lungs of city life and as places of interaction among residents.

Long live Bogor Botanical Garden, a restful place for all.