Myanmar will hold a flower festival at a national park in Pyin Oo Lwin in northern Mandalay division to attract more tourists, said a report of Monday's local weekly pre-published on Sunday.

The 13-day Flower Festival 2006 at the Kandawkyi National Park, scheduled for Dec. 10-22 and is sponsored by the Ministry of Forestry and the Woodland Group of Companies, will feature about 500,000 foreign and domestic flower plants, the Myanmar Times said.

Flower plants to be displayed will include such rare foreign plants as tulips, lilies, begonias, Gebara daisies and Cymbidium orchids, it said.

According to the Woodland Group, flower experts from China's Kunming have been invited to join Myanmar's amateur flower decorators in building replicas of famous Myanmar sights made from flower.

The upcoming flower festival will be the first of its kind in the Kandawgyi park's history since it was established in 1915 as a botanical garden by a British forestry official, Charles Rogers, the report said.

The 60-hectare garden was expanded several times and reached 177 hectares in 2000, which comprises lake, natural forest, observation tower and rose, orchid and bamboo gardens.

According to the park's statistics, about 400,000 people have visited the park annually since it was reopened in 2001.

(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2006)