Bihar's first botanical garden will open its gates in a year, at Piparghatti near Bodhgaya, around 140km south of Patna.

The environment and forests department will soon sign a memorandum of understanding with the Botanical Survey of India to set up the 140-acre garden. It will have a herbarium - a kind of library where samples of different species of plants are kept under special conditions, and where people looking for information on the state's flora can get details. A digital form of the herbarium would also be created, and in some time, trees at the garden will be bar-coded.

Indian Botanic Garden, in Shibpur, Howrah, around 12km from Calcutta, was the country's first botanical garden. It is spread over 270 acres of land and was set up in 1787. The world's best-known botanical garden, the Royal Botanical Garden in Kew, England, got UN heritage site status in 2003.

The botanical garden at Piparghatti will be developed on the premises of a biodiversity park.

"We have already planted over 120 varieties of plants in the biodiversity park at Piparghatti and more additions would be done once we have the detailed report of the botanical survey of Bihar with us," D.K. Shukla, principal chief conservator of forests, told The Telegraph.

The environment and forests department has enlisted the services of the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, to carry out the botanical survey in the state for the past three years.

The final report, which will help the environment and forests department identify the endangered plants and those near extinction, is likely to be submitted within a year.

This would be the first such report for the state in the post-Independence era. The last such survey, for Bihar, and then Orissa, was done by HH Haines. The report was published in 1924.

Shukla said A.K. Jha, environment secretary at the Centre, has assured the Bihar government that permission would be granted for the garden once all necessary formalities are completed. The botanical garden is expected to have the herbs, shrubs and trees that are found in Bihar.

The botanical garden at Piparghatti is not the only "green zone" on Bihar's mind. Two biodiversity parks, one each at Araria and Jamui, are also being developed.

The park in Araria is being developed on two separate plots of 150 acres and 300 acres.

Work at the Araria park is at an advanced stage, while preliminary work is under way on the Jamui park (to be spread over 70 acres). These two parks will also have bar-coded trees - one scan on your smartphone, and you will get every information on the species.

The department will also develop the Araria biodiversity park as an eco-tourism spot.

"We have already set up eco huts and cafeteria at the park so that visitors can spend quality time there," Shukla said, adding that several tourists from the Purnea region have started visiting the park.