Asia’s largest rose garden, the Zakir Hussain Rose Garden of Chandigarh, will soon have a new, refurbished look with new varieties of flowers and more amenities to attract tourists.

The Chandigarh administration has prepared an exhaustive roadmap to upgrade the garden, to attract more foreign and domestic tourists. 

"The rose garden is the prime tourist spot for the city and there is need to renovate it. Our new plan focuses on breaking the old-fashioned and stereotype planning through additions of new varieties of exotic flowers, creating a back-up system and landscaping, combined with recreational aspects," Chandigarh Finance Secretary Sanjay Kumar said here on Thursday. 

"Innovative ideas would be used to arouse curiosity amongst the residents and visitors. New concept sections of roses would be added, which would be named after great world personalities and countries," he said, adding efforts were on to develop a section called "Pride of India" with exclusive collection of roses evolved in India. 

The rose garden, spread over 30 acres, has nearly 2,000 varieties of roses and an assortment of medicinal plants. 

The administration also aims to have a back-up system, as for the major part of the year, no roses flower in the garden, and therefore, a separate rose varieties bank would be set up. 

"The ministry of tourism has already sanctioned a grant of Rs. 26.9 million (Rs. 2.69 crore) for Rose Garden which would be utilised for purchasing of new rose varieties, development of rose nursery, a library and a tourist information centre. A huge chunk of this grant will be spent to install fountains and for better illumination of the garden for the night tourism dimensions," Sanjay Kumar said.