The Royal Botanical Garden, Serbithang is the only botanical garden in the country and has a total area of about 32 acres. The foundation stone for the establishment of the Royal Botanical Garden, Serbithang was laid on 26^th May, 1999 by Her Majesty Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck to commemorate the silver jubilee celebration of His Majesty the 4^th Druk Gyalpo’s golden reign. It was established as an institutional area with living collections of plant diversity found in the country with the following objectives:

1. To act as a conservation (ex situ) site for scientific studies.
2. To showcase the nation’s floral wealth to visitors.
3. To act as educational resources for school children and other users.
4. To act as a recreational site for public.

The initial establishment was facilitated through the funding support of BTFEC, where basic infrastructure of the garden was developed. Further, in order to implement activities to achieve its objective, BTFEC provided a 2^nd phase grant amounting to Nu. 5.515 million from July 2001 to January 2004. Post-2004, the garden was mainly funded through the Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB), with the exception of the Darwin Initiative project implemented from 2004- 2006 to develop capacity of the staff and garden through technical exchange program with Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.

Between 2012 and 2013, the Royal Botanical garden formulated and implemented a collaborative project titled “Rescue and restore rare plant species found at Mangdechu Hydro Power Authority (MHPA) project sites” with MHPA amounting to Nu. 175,000.00. This project documented the existing floral diversity of the MHPA project affected sites and rescued selected species from the project affected sites for ex situ conservation at the botanical garden. The collaborative project exemplified the benefits of collaboration between a conservation agency and development partner and subsequently led to the botanical garden receiving funding support to carry out similar activities from Tangsibji Hydro Power Project Authority. Therefore, from January 2014 to June 2017, the botanical garden implemented a project titled “Rescue and rehabilitation of threatened and rare plant species from 118 MW Nikachhu Hydropower project sites for long-term conservation and development of national repository of botanical information”. The project with a total fund

of Nu. 3,607,075.00 was collaborative project between National Biodiversity Centre, Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Serbithang and Tangsibji Hydro Energy Limited.