Profile

Mr. Sawet and Mrs. Sobha Piamphongsant were the founder of the Sobha Botanical Garden. Mr. Sawet was a former 8 times Member of Parliament of Rayong Province, Deputy Minister of Finance, Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand in 1976

“He began his political carrier from 1949 to 1976”

“He was also well known for his writing on poetry works and on Buddhism.”

His wife, Sobha was a daughter of a prominent conductor and playwright name ”Kanchanakbhand”. (1897-1980)

With the will to conserve Thailand natural plant resources, it took 20 years of planting the woodland from the unpropitious land consisting of shrub forest and crowded small native trees and bushes growing on the mound of 12.65 acres of land to establish this botanical garden.

Preserver of Thai Heritage

Between 1978 -1980 the Piamphongsant created a Thai garden with 3 traditional houses of more than one hundred years, restored from the central part of Thailand. The couples was known as enthusiastic antique collector. They began to transform the 3 Thai classical houses into museum with elaborated Thai houses decors displaying antique objects and objets d’art. The fourth Thai teak wood house was built to the museum ground in the same traditional Thai style. One also see a Thai Sala, an open pavilion used as a meeting place surrounded by garden.

The Embellishment

The period from May 2016 onwards, Mrs. Duangrudee the daughter of Mr. Sawet and Mrs. Sobha, who was trained in arts and designs from the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg, Germany, has restored the gardens and the Thai house museum in to an educational and cultural property in order that it will be more interest and benefit to the visitors.