Tropical Greenhouse, Isfahan Flower Garden (Bagh-e Golha)

Isfahan's Flower Garden (Bagh-e Golha) opened during the 1370s of the Persian calendar (1991–2001), on a 72,000 m² site. It brings together a rock garden, a pool for aquatic plants, a rose garden, a garden of medicinal and edible plants and large beds of seasonal flowers. In the north-east corner, an area of 700 m² is given over to glasshouses, intended to show flowers to the public in the depths of winter; this is where the tropical dome stands.

The tropical plant collection opened in the Persian year 1399 (2020–2021). It was created by a team of specialists from Isfahan Municipality's Parks and Green Space Organization, who set out to round off the garden's plant diversity; the project cost more than 40 billion rials.

In January 2023 the newspaper Esfahan Ziba described the dome as a place of study for students and researchers. It reported peaks of about 14,000 visitors during holiday periods, but also falling attendance as a result of the pandemic, cold weather and air pollution. The article, which quoted the garden's manager, Hossein Vosoughi, also announced an app devoted to the plants in the collection for the following year.

The dome is a geodesic structure with a base 30 m in diameter and a height of 20 m, matching the footprint of about 700 m² given for the glasshouse. Its climate is run by a smart control system that holds the temperature at a constant 23 °C, with heating and cooling supplied by a geothermal installation presented as sustainable. Inside, two waterfalls of natural rock, each six metres high, shape the planted landscape. Plants are labelled with QR codes that call up information sheets on a smartphone. Around the dome, the Flower Garden has another waterfall 4 m high and a pool of some 3,500 m² reserved for aquatic plants.

Some 300 plant species grow under the dome. Tropical fruit plants take pride of place: pineapple, mango, avocado, papaya, coffee, cacao, guava and vanilla. Ornamental shrubs and trees include abutilons, tecomas, camellias and moringas, while palms are represented by Rhapis and coconut palms. Flowers come from orchids, bromeliads (Aechmea, Billbergia, Cryptanthus), strelitzias, calatheas and pedilanthus. The dome also serves as a study site for students and researchers, and in 2023 an app cataloguing the plants of the collection was announced.

The dome stands in the Flower Garden, which lines Salman Farsi Street in Isfahan and covers 72,000 m². A visit can take in the rock garden, with 250 species on 2,500 m², the garden of medicinal and edible plants, which holds 132, the rose garden, the pool of aquatic plants and the section of bulbs such as lilies and dahlias. An amphitheatre with 250 seats hosts activities. Kept at 23 °C, the tropical glasshouse carries on in winter the original purpose of the garden's glasshouses: to offer flowers through the cold season.