Historic Greenhouses of the Zohria Garden (Hadiqat al-Zohriya)

The Zohria Garden was created in 1868 by decree of Khedive Ismail. It originally covered 49 feddans on Gezira island, in what is now the Zamalek district. The work was entrusted to Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, a head gardener from Paris, assisted by Gustave Delchevalerie, who later took charge of the khedivial gardens. The site was conceived as an acclimatisation centre for rare plants brought from abroad, and for more than a century and a half it also supplied trees for the streets of the capital.

By 1871 four glasshouses covering 4,000 m², with a further 200 m² of wooden greenhouses, housed plants from hot regions, foliage plants and aquatic plants. In 1917 the Ministry of Agriculture took over the garden and made it a centre for acclimatising, propagating and distributing plants. Its area has since been cut to 8 feddans.

In 2024 residents learned that the garden might close for 'development', as the Orman Garden and Giza Zoo had before it. A petition gathered more than 5,000 signatures and a complaint was lodged on 6 October; the Zamalek Development Society then announced that the garden would stay open and that the state was committed to preserving the character of the heritage greenhouses. In July 2025, however, the website Bab Masr criticised a plan for an 'artificial forest' with restaurants and a boutique hotel, and the debate was still running in early 2026.

Zohria's old greenhouses are iron-framed structures fitted with glass panels, designed to shield tropical plants from winter frost, the hot khamsin winds and the fierce summer heat. In 1871 the garden had four glasshouses covering 4,000 m² in all, plus 200 m² of wooden greenhouses. The sources consulted do not establish how many of these 19th-century houses survive today, nor their present dimensions. The garden also has a building housing laboratories and a research library. The redevelopment plan debated since 2024 includes themed walkways, restaurants, a boutique hotel, fitness facilities and night-time activities, which its critics say breach Egypt's Law 144 of 2006 on the protection of architectural heritage.

Acclimatisation has always been Zohria's purpose: its glasshouses were used to raise plants from hot regions, foliage plants and aquatic plants before they were planted out in the gardens and streets of Cairo. In 1917 the Ministry of Agriculture made it a centre for propagating and distributing plants, a role carried on by the garden's tree and shrub nursery. The site holds trees more than a century old, including a giant banyan in the part known as the island, as well as a rose garden with 150 varieties. The sources consulted do not detail the species grown under glass today.

The Zohria Garden lies in Zamalek, on Gezira island in central Cairo, and now covers 8 feddans, about 3.4 hectares. A walk takes in the old greenhouses, the rose garden, the nursery and the great trees, among them the banyan on the island. Kept open to the public in 2024 after residents campaigned for it, the garden is the subject of a disputed redevelopment plan, so it is wise to check access to the greenhouses before going. Its history is bound up with that of the khedivial gardens, which Gustave Delchevalerie, one of its creators, went on to direct.