Garden of Eden100 : an alternative vacation spot besides lake toba

Garden of Eden100 is located in North Sionggang village, subdistrict Lumban Julu, district Toba Samosir. With a height of 1,100 to 1750 meters above sea level. Garden of Eden100 can be an alternative vacation spot for tourists beside of lake toba. Garden of Eden100 is a tropical forest with an area of 40 hectares, It has an average temperature of 20 degrees celsius in the daytime.

This park is managed to aim for the natural ecosystem restore from damaged. In this park, you can find fig trees of Jerusalem and butter nut from the Amazon that grow thrives. Both of these trees lush and fertile although unfruitful. Perhaps the climate is not suitable to make this trees fruitful. At least, the presence of trees adds to the wealth collection of the Garden of Eden 100.

In addition to the fig tree and butter nut, you can also see the typical Batak plants that began to rare plants such as flowers sampinur, hariara, jabi-jabi, tahul-tahul, and andaliman. Besides viewing rare plants, visitors are free to eat fruits in the forest conservation owned by Marandus Sirait and family. There is also durian fruit, avocados, oranges, and guava.

Garden of Eden100 is perfect tours for lovers of plants and flowers. Management in particular build a toba orchid conservation area with the label Orchid Park, the only garden orchid conservation forests in North Sumatra. Another uniqueness is owned by this forest conservation is located on a label that is written in every tree along the trail. This label contains the names of the agency or organization or individual. This means each existing tree of this garden are planted by each visitor who wish to perpetuate his visit. The name refers the identity of the owner of the tree.

If visitors feel tired after enjoying a variety of beautiful plants and flowers, they are also able to visit a bat cave which is about 2.5 hours' walk from the entrance. In this cave, visitors can enjoy the natural beauty around the protected forest adjacent to the Garden of Eden 100 or can also look directly to the bat habitat. Apart from the bat cave, there are also quite beautiful waterfall for your to visit, about 20 minutes from the park entrance of the garden.

Founder of Eden 100
Garden of Eden 100 was built by Marandus Sirait. A music teacher in medan who experience anxiety because of the environment where he lives suffered significant damage. Looking at the environment that continues to damage, Marandus trying to improve the land area of ​​40 hectares owned by the family that went untreated. Early in 1990, the construction the project of started Marandus Eden 100, he planted 100 species of plant production. Plant seeds he obtained from selling electric guitars, keyboards and some musical instruments that he had. He determined to build the dream for create a forest that can be utilized by residents around Lake Toba. In 2005, the hard work of marandus started successfully. He was awarded the Kalpataru from the government because of efforts to improve forest. And in 2010, he again received the award WAHANA LESTARI. All the awards he won, making he more as to continue the development of Eden 100, by nature and by society.

How to get there
40 hectares of forest sites are located on the edge of Parapat-Balige Highway, about 190 kilometers from Medan to Tarutung. You can travel using private cars or car lease from Parapat, with a distance of about 17 kilometers to the direction of Balige. Long journey that you take about 5-6 hours from the medan. If you have difficulty for find the location of this forest, you can ask people who are along the highway-Balige Parapat, average people here already know the location of this garden of Eden 100.

Travel Tips
-. Entrance ticket area is for Rp 3000 - Rp 7000 per person
-. To immortalize your name, you can plant trees that will be labeled according to your name, the purchase cost of the trees around Rp 100,000 - Rp 300,000.
-. Around this area is not yet available lodging. If you want to stay, you can select a city Parapat for find a place to stay.
-. Remain cautious as long in the forest, together in one group would be better, because the region close to the protected forest.
-. Obey all the rules that exist in this forest area for your comfort while traveling.