The Mother Tongue Garden is known as a gathering place of demonstrators. After the adoption of the new Soviet constitution in 1977, the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR drafted a constitution in which, unlike the 1936 constitution, Georgian was no longer declared the state language. This initiative was met with a whole series of protests. On April 14, 1978, a great rally demanding the preservation of the language's status was held in the garden — and it succeeded: Georgian remained the state language. To commemorate the event, the Monument to the Mother Tongue was later erected in the garden (architects Elguja Amashukeli and Nodar Mgaloblishvili).