The Batumi Botanical Garden charges foreigners double to picnic — and is best walked from the top down

The garden sits 9 kilometres from Batumi, on the coast north of the centre. Municipal buses 10 and 10a run there, as do marshrutkas 31 and 40; a taxi is the other option. Opening hours are listed as 09:00 to 20:00. There are toilets on site and no Wi-Fi. Allow half a day rather than an hour — the grounds are large enough that a quick visit means seeing one corner of them.

The official listing publishes fees for two activities rather than for entry. Camping in the garden's seaside park, from 18:00 until 10:00 the next morning, costs ₾25 per person for Georgian citizens and ₾50 for foreign citizens. A picnic in the Caucasian and American departments costs ₾15 per person for Georgian citizens and ₾30 for foreign citizens. There is a barbecue grill and a water tap. Neither the official page nor the secondary guide gives a general admission price, though the guide does say entry is paid — so call ahead rather than arriving with an exact amount in your pocket.

The single most useful piece of advice about this place is a matter of direction. The grounds run up a hillside above the sea, and climbing from the lower seaside entrance is harder work than walking down from the top, which is why many visitors start at the upper gate. An electric car circulates on the grounds and is useful for children and older visitors, though no price for it is published. Wear shoes you can walk slopes in, and be careful after rain, when the paths turn slippery.

The garden was founded in 1912 by the botanist Andrey Krasnov and is laid out in zones holding plants from different parts of the world, from Himalayan and Japanese to Australian and South American. It is hot and busy in summer and more pleasant in spring and autumn, with mornings better than afternoons on both counts. For a host in Batumi, that makes it a good recommendation precisely in the shoulder months when guests have fewer reasons to leave the seafront — and a half-day suggestion rather than a between-meals one, which is worth saying at check-in rather than after.