Horticultural and Ecological Assessment of Public Gardens and Parks at Benghazi City during Last Five Decades

Gardens and parks play significant and major role from ecological and environmental point of view. The presence of trees, plants and greenery in public gardens and resorts helps to cool the surrounding environment, reduce air pollution and improve air quality. They can also support pollinators and wild life like bees, butter flies and birds by providing a diverse range of flowering plants and habitats for urban wildlife. Despite of the ornamental plants were very limited, and the workers and specialists in this field were very rare, the municipality of Benghazi tried to provide the horticultural structures like plant nurseries, training programs and investing in employees and providing opportunities for their development. During years from 1990 to 2023, the number of gardens and parks was jumped to more than 127. Recently, more horticultural care was noticed not only in the governmental sector but also in the private one while the number of ornamental nurseries increased, private agricultural companies established, and more plants were imported and introduced to the city. Because of lack of information, we tried to analyzed and assayed the gardens and parks situation from horticultural and ecological point of view at Benghazi city from 1973 to the present using available information with focusing on the development of this sector to provide more data base for the authorities, interests and researchers.