Abstract:
Sri Lanka is famous for the herbal medicine that attracts many local and foreign tourists. The
medicinal garden concept is an integral part of the herbal medicine and it provides awareness
and conservation of traditional medicine in Sri Lanka. With current deforestation and overexploitation activities, valuable medicinal plant species are extinct and remove from nature.
Therefore they need special attention and conservation methods. Further, due to urbanization
and exhausting lifestyle, people suffer from numerous physical and mental problems. This
study focused to design a novel medicinal garden concept to conserve and sustainable use of local medicinal plants. Mainly, the study consisted a questionnaire survey that performed in four
tourist regions (viz. Dambulla, Kandy, Udawalawe and Galle) of Sri Lanka to select a suitable
region and to identify the components (natural pool, natural scents, night sky watching, water
paths ant etc.) that are needed to build a successful medicinal garden. Traditional doctors, local
and foreign tourists and villagers were interviewed during January-July 2019. Results showed
that the mean perception level to experience medicinal garden was 72.2%. All proposed 40
components were accepted by tourists with exceeding the 50% perception level. Dambulla region was selected to build the medicinal garden as the tourists’ perception analysis, its regional
characteristics and suitability of the land to establish the proposed medicinal garden. Based on
the climatic, topographic, type of soil, size and space of the land extent, 124 medicinal plant
species were identified with their information such as scientific name, medicinal usages and
their acceptance for the selected region. A medicinal plant documentary was also developed
for the medicinal garden. A scaled model medicinal garden was successfully developed with
incorporating the existing characters of the selected land. The model also identified features
that contribute to minimize potential damage to the environment and improve the livelihoods of
the selected region. The outcomes of this study can be applied to uplift the Sri Lankan tourism
industry by highlighting the values of its natural beauty and the traditional herbal medicine
without adversely affecting the ecological systems. And conserve medicinal plant diversity
with their environment
