Desert Botanical Garden

Desert Botanical Garden lies about 10 kilometers (6 miles) southeast of Turpan City, Xinjiang Province. It is the largest botanical garden in China, built on a bottomland (low-lying area), where the average altitude is -80 meters (-262 feet). The garden is positioned in an extremely windy area, where one finds quicksand and an often unforgiving climate. It's location has earned it nicknames such as the 'Wind Storeroom' and 'Land of Fire', because this area is home to the most ferocious winds in all of China. Indeed, one might rightly call it the mother of all gale-force wind tunnels, since it regularly churns out gale-force winds reaching a level of 8 on the Beaufort-12 scale. On an average year, there is a gale-force wind of level 8 that lasts for a month, and in some years it lasts for up to two months.

The Desert Botanical Garden began as a sand-control station in 1972, and was converted into a botanical garden in 1976. As one of the 12 botanical gardens directly under the lead of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, it is used for importing, domesticating, and expanding sand-fixation plants. It is filled with plants, flowers, and herbal medicines - highlighting a collection of commonly used herbal medicines from Uigur. The area is also used as an area to test sand-control methods as well as a tourist destination. The garden includes seven different parts, categorized according to uses and vegetation.

There are altogether more than 300 sandy-soil plants being preserved here, comprising 71 genera, with 247 species, of which 49 species are precious plants on the verge of extinction, including a species of the Chinese date, or jujube (which, unlike the palm-tree date of Middle Eastern deserts, is a deciduous shrub), the sand ilex, the white thorn, various liquorices, etc.

These 247 species of plants comprise roughly 80% of all desert plants found in sandy-soil areas throughout China. The Chinese Tamarisk Garden maintains 15 different tamarisk varieties, which account for 83% of all the tamarisk plants of China. When the tamarisk tree is in bloom, it fills the garden with red, and a sense of springtime invariably pervades the area. The Herbal Medicine Garden deserves special attention, as more than 50 herbal medicine plants from China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, from Kazakhstan, and from Mongolia have been collected and replanted here, establishing the Herbal Medicine Garden as an important research center for herbal-medicine plants.

The desert arboretum is intersticed by a series of interconnecting roads and a network of irrigation pipes, and with various adjacent support facilities.  A corresponding scientific research facility with nearby housing blocks for the research facility's staff have also been constructed within the arboretum. With its focus on the re-introduction and preservation of rare desert plants, including a number of plants that are on the verge of extinction, the Desert Botanical Garden of Turpan ranks as one of the primary plant-preservation arboretums for sandy-soil plants in the world, providing not only economic benefits, but also zoological benefits to China as well as to the entire world.

The Desert Botanical Garden of Turpan boasts an observation tower whose telescope offers spectacular views of the Bogda Peak of the Tianshan Mountains, the Flame Mountain Range, the Grape Valley, and Ayding Lake. It is THE place to go to take in the expanse of the topography surrounding the city of Turpan. Together with the Ancient City of Jiaohe and Karez System, this botanical garden has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Turpan. From the watchtower inside it, one has an excellent view of the Flaming Mountains, the Grape Valley, and the Aydingkol Lake, all of which will make a visit to Turpan even more enjoyable.

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