Planning and design principles of Artvin Çoruh University Ali Nihat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden in a sustainable approach

Abstract

Botanic gardens are institutions holding documented collections of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. Gardens and the cultivation of plants have been around for thousands of years with the first examples dating to around 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the last 50 years botanic gardens are increasingly recognised as being extremely important to conservation due to their existing collections and the scientific knowledge they possess in the propagation of plant species. There are 3765 botanical institutions, 1775 botanic gardens and arboreta in 148 countries around the world with many more under construction or being planned. 628 of them are being members of the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) platform. The Artvin Çoruh University Ali Nihat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden (ANGBB) was established in 2018 and opened to the public in 2022. ANGBB is one of the 13 botanical gardens from Turkey that are members of this platform. There are around 30,000 plants belonging to approximately 2000 different species, including 400 rare, 200 medicinal-aromatic, and about 1400 decorative species, cultivated in the garden. A total of 594 seeds belonging to specialized species such as Medicinal Aromatic and endemic plants are preserved in the seed house of the botanical garden. Within the scope of this research, the purpose, functions, planning, and design of botanic gardens have been evaluated according to the economic, ecological, and social components of sustainability, and sustainable planning and design criteria have been established for the ANGBB. These criteria address structural landscape design, plant landscape design, administrative planning, spatial planning, educational, social, and cultural planning, as well as management and maintenance. The ANGBB has been evaluated in terms of sustainable planning and design criteria, and recommendations for enhancing the sustainability of the ANGBB have been provided based on the data obtained.