Evaluation of Visitors Perspectives for Planning of National Botanical Garden of Iran

This research was carried out in National Botanical Garden of Iran (N.B.G.I) to evaluate the perspectives of visitors for optimum planning of the garden. National Botanical Garden of Iran with an area of 145 ha and more than 40 years old, is the biggest in the Middle East. This garden is located in the vicinity of Chitgar Forest Park, west of Tehran. Regarding the garden’s opening to public visitors and the importance of visitors’ perspectives in planningand management of this area, we tried to assess the garden through a social sampling process. A questionnaire was designed to find the planning priorities in N.B.G.I and was distributed in two forms of probable and non-probable among different people. Based on the Cochran formula, 200 visitors were selected in the probable method. Also, experts and key stakeholders were selected in non-probable method. Analysis of the answers showed that the non-governmental visitors and expert visitors comprised the maximum and minimum proportion of visitors, respectively. Furthermore, the non-probable method was superior to the probable method in determination of planning priority. We found that the relation of the garden with similar abroad botanical gardens and other relevant institutes is an important aspect of planning the N.B.G.I.