🌿 The Shevardnadze Garden in Tbilisi: Entry, Opening Hours and How to Get There

Tbilisi has a garden that people visit not for rare trees or panoramas, but for the mood. Flowers grow in samovars and old shoes, and in the middle of the greenery stands a small café serving homemade pastries. This is Gardenia Shevardnadze, a private garden and plant nursery on a hill on the road to Tbilisi Sea. The address, phone number and map point are in our catalogue card for Gardenia Shevardnadze, and the city's other garden centres are in the section on flower and plant shops in Tbilisi.

We wrote this article because of the confusion. Online, the entry price and the opening hours are given differently in different places: in one the garden works from nine to six, in another until ten in the evening. We checked everything against the official website and the latest publications, and we say plainly what we could not confirm.

🌿 What Gardenia Shevardnadze Is

Gardenia began in 2004 as a small nursery for ornamental plants. Over time a café, workshops, rooms, event spaces and a guest house grew up around it. Today it is a garden of about one hectare with, according to the owner, more than 3,000 plants, and the official website says the greenhouse holds more than 500 species.

It helps to understand how this place differs from a botanical garden. The Tbilisi Botanical Garden covers almost a hundred hectares, with a gorge, a waterfall and routes that take hours, and we described it in our guide to the Tbilisi Botanical Garden. Gardenia is a hundred times smaller and arranged differently: it is one person's garden, where every flower bed was thought up and assembled by hand. People come for a couple of hours to stroll, have tea and take a pot with a flower home.

The name combines the gardenia flower and the surname of the founder, the gardener Zurab Shevardnadze. We tell his story below, because the garden is hard to understand without it.

🎟️ Entry and Tickets for Gardenia Shevardnadze

Entry to the garden is paid. In 2025 it cost 5 GEL: several sources give this figure, including a national tourism portal and a business publication. One travel site writes that children enter free, but it does not name an age limit.

The official website does not list a price, so we could not confirm the amount for autumn 2026. If you see 2 GEL in older blogs, do not rely on it: that figure is out of date.

We found no online sales of entry tickets; you pay on the spot. Bring a card and a little cash. Events inside the garden are ticketed separately: concerts and the children's "green lessons" appear on biletebi.ge.

🕙 Opening Hours and the Winter Break

The garden and café are open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 22:00. Monday is a day off. The plant shop sells until 18:00, so come in the daytime if you want to shop.

There is a caveat about the café: another page of the same website gives its hours as until 19:00. If you plan dinner or an evening tea, confirm your table by phone.

The main thing tourists learn at a closed gate: from 1 January to 1 March Gardenia is closed. This is an annual winter break. Before holidays and in Easter week the schedule can also shift, and the garden announces this on its social networks.

🚌 How to Get to Gardenia Shevardnadze

The garden is in the north-east of the city, about three kilometres from Station Square. Do not walk: the road is long and uphill all the way.

The bus ride takes about ten minutes and costs 1 GEL. How to pay with a card in city transport and what MetroMoney is, we covered in our article on how much transport costs in Tbilisi. Before you leave, check the route in a city transport app on your phone.

A taxi from the centre is a short ride, and it is the simplest option if you are with children or plan to carry plants back. We will not name a price: it depends on the app and the time of day.

🌷 When to Go: Seasons at Gardenia

The garden does not publish a month-by-month bloom calendar, and we will not invent one. The main points are known, though. Seasonal flowers are kept here from early spring to late autumn, the displays change almost every month, and the owner himself names March to May and September to November as the peak. Visitors mention roses, tulips and azaleas among the garden's flowers.

If you are in Georgia in late autumn, Gardenia fits well into a city programme. What else to do at that time, we collected in our article on Georgia in November.

What to See in the Garden

Gardenia is arranged as a series of small open-air rooms. Visitors describe it like this.

The upper part is densely packed with plants, and almost all of them are for sale. Flower beds are made here from anything: flowers grow in samovars, old shoes and a painted piano, cups hang from branches, and an old Soviet car holds a flower bed.

The café stands between the two parts of the garden and looks like a grandmother's house with a veranda.

The lower part is closer to an ordinary nursery: neat rows of identical plants, mirrors between them and a site where weddings and celebrations are held.

Besides this, the garden has greenhouses, lily ponds, a clay workshop and a gift shop with old items from Soviet homes. In 2023 an embroidery workshop also operated here: according to the founder, forty women from Adjara preserve old techniques and receive the income themselves.

For everything, including tea, allow, by our estimate, one to two hours. The garden is small, but it does not let you hurry.

☕ The Café in the Garden

The menu is short and homely. The official website writes about family recipes, homemade compotes and juices, pastries and black tea from the garden's own plantation. Visitors also mention tarts with apple, cherry, walnut and orange, and khachapuri.

The café is small and often full, so the garden asks you to book a table by phone in advance. There are no prices in open sources.

🛍️ The Plant and Gift Shop

Gardenia remains a nursery, and this is perhaps the best souvenir from Tbilisi for those who live here. The shop sells houseplants and garden plants, seedlings and seeds, and staff advise on care. Garden planning is also offered.

Mind the time: plants are sold until 18:00, even if the garden itself is open until the evening.

🛏️ The Gardenia Guest House

You can stay overnight in the garden. The guest house has six rooms, each furnished with antique furniture and items from Shevardnadze's personal collection. The rooms are also rented out for photo and video shoots.

The garden does not publish prices or booking terms. You can find them out by phone at +995 32 224 67 03 or by email at [email protected].

👶 Gardenia with Children

For children the garden runs "green lessons". A group walks around the garden with a gardener-teacher, then in the workshop the children mix the soil themselves, paint a pot and plant a seedling to take home. There are also clay workshop classes. Tickets for children's lessons appear on biletebi.ge, and groups from kindergartens and schools sign up by phone.

One practical detail. The paths in the garden are narrow and covered with gravel, so the garden does not recommend strollers. With a toddler, a sling or carrier is more convenient. Near the ponds and glass panels, you are asked to keep an eye on children.

Where else to go as a family, we wrote in our article on where to go in Tbilisi with children.

📋 Garden Rules

The rules are published on the official website. They are short, but some surprise guests.

The rules say nothing about ordinary snapshots for memory. Arrangements are needed for organised shoots: wedding, family and commercial. The garden gives the cost on request.

👤 Who Zurab Shevardnadze Is

Zurab, or Zura, Shevardnadze comes from Guria, in western Georgia. By his own account, he planted his first tree, a persimmon, at the age of five together with his grandfather. Then came study in Germany: publications about him mention the University of Bonn and a degree in botany and biology.

On returning to Tbilisi, he took an abandoned plot of a former Soviet nursery on the outskirts. The land was boggy, and the garden was assembled piece by piece over many years. Part of the team, as Shevardnadze says himself, were workers from that old nursery.

His approach is called emotional gardening. The garden's motto is "Person, Garden, Emotion". Shevardnadze is interested in old and forgotten varieties, which he brings back and tells guests about. The garden's website separately mentions Mikheil Mamulashvili, a gardener from Mtskheta, whose ideas the garden regards as its own tradition.

In 2025 Shevardnadze told journalists that the garden would no longer grow in size: "I have enclosed the garden with buildings." He is now focused on new collections and varieties.

🗺️ What Else Is Nearby

Gardenia stands on the road to Tbilisi Sea, and in the warm season the two places combine easily into one day. What to do there and where to swim, read in our piece on Tbilisi Sea. And if you want greenery in the heart of the city, look at the section on gardens and parks of Tbilisi.

Have you been to Gardenia? Tell us on Madloba how much you paid at the entrance, what was in bloom on the day of your visit and whether you got a café table without booking. We especially look forward to reviews this autumn: with them we will refine the price and the schedule.

The information is current as of October 2026. Opening hours and winter break dates are taken from the garden's official website. The entry price is given from 2025 publications and may have changed, so confirm it by phone at +995 32 224 67 03 before you go.