Semmozhi Poonga

Semmozhi Poonga is a botanical garden in Chennai set up by the horticulture department of the Government of Tamil Nadu. The lawn was opened on 24 November 2010 by means of then chief Minister Dr. M. Karunanidhi and is the first botanical garden inside the town. The garden is placed within the Cathedral Road–Anna Salai junction, opposite the American Consulate, on the erstwhile Drive-in Woodlands Hotel. Encompassing an area of 20 acres 320 grounds, it become constructed at a cost of eighty million.

More than 500 species of plants are being grown in the area, in addition to the 80 bushes that was already in life all through the development of the park, a number of them being extra than a hundred years antique. The lawn houses a number of the popular wonderful flora and rare plant species, medicinal and fragrant herbs. Many of the uncommon flora are imported from nations like China and Thailand, inclusive of a plethora of bonsai kinds of ficus microcarpa and ficus ginseng.

The region wherein the botanical garden stands nowadays was previously the region of the Woodlands Drive-In restaurant, the city's first force-in eating place, and the Agri-Horticultural Society. In April 1962, the Agri-Horticultural Society sub-leased the 18-acre land to hotelier K. Krishna Rau, who started out the Woodlands Drive-in Hotel on 15 April 1962. It become an extension of the "Woodlands" logo, then popular in the city as the best.