The World Horti-Expo Garden was built for the 1999 International Horticultural Exposition, an event that triggered most of the modernisation of present-day Kunming. The 218-hectare site, on a hillside in the northeastern suburbs, has been kept open as a public botanical garden and is one of the largest in China.
The grounds are organised into themed sections — a Chinese garden of provinces, an international garden of countries, a bamboo garden, a tea garden, a rare plant garden — connected by a small monorail that loops the site. Some of the original 1999 pavilions still stand. The park is most worth a visit in spring, when the azaleas and camellias for which Yunnan is famous come into bloom.