Nikitsky Botanical Garden

Nikitsky Botanical Garden (officially the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science “Order of the Red Banner of Labor Nikitsky Botanical Garden – National Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences”) is a comprehensive research institution that conducts work on fruit growing and botany. In the Russian Empire, the Imperial Nikitsky Botanical Garden was a state institution, in Soviet times it was subordinate to VASKHNIL, and after the collapse of the USSR until March 18, 2014 it was part of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. From January 4 to December 2015, as the State Budgetary Institution of the Republic of Crimea, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor Nikitsky Botanical Garden – National Scientific Center was subordinated to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Located on the southern coast of the Crimea between the village of Nikita and the Black Sea. In June 1811, in St. Petersburg, Emperor Alexander I signed the “Decree on the establishment of the Imperial State Botanical Garden in the Crimea”, in which he allowed to arrange a state garden in the “midday part of the Crimea”, allocating up to 10,000 rubles annually. The decree was issued at the request of Kherson military governor Duke Emmanuel Osipovich de Richelieu, who then ruled the Novorossiysk Territory. Richelieu’s initiative was developed with the support of the 29-year-old count Mikhail Vorontsov, close to the emperor, and with the assistance of the chief inspector for silk farming in the south of Russia, Bieberstein, an outstanding German botanist who served in Russia for almost twenty years.

Christian Steven

In March 1812, on the recommendation of Richelieu and Bieberstein, a well-known naturalist, assistant and student of Bieberstein, 31-year-old Christian Steven, was appointed director of the Imperial Tauride State Botanical Garden established on the southern coast of the Crimea. It was he who organized the botanical garden as the first experienced garden institution in the south of Russia. According to Christian Steven, this institution was to form an extensive breeding ground for all useful and ornamental plants of southern Europe, for their distribution in the Crimea. In September 1812, the first landings were made. Three years later, the botanical garden released its first catalog of plants, which included 95 varieties of apple trees, 58 varieties of pears, 6 berries and 15 decorative breeds. Here to the observations and theoretical studies of Steven, — wrote the academician P. I. Koeppen, — joined and practice, to which the whole of southern Russia owes the cultivation and distribution of a large number of new more or less acclimatized trees and plants, both with falling foliage, and evergreen, as well as the best varieties of fruit trees. Thanks to Steven, the Nikitsky Garden soon turned into a beautiful nursery and botanical acclimatization point, which served as a stage in the transition of plants from east to west and back from Europe to Asia.

These merits of Steven on the arrangement of the garden, clarified by Academician Keppen in his work Ueber Pflanzen-Acclimatisirung in Russland, prompted the Duke of Richelieu to come to the Emperor Alexander I in 1818 for the industrious scientist 2,000 chervonets, who gave Steven the opportunity to undertake a two-year trip abroad to study and pick up fruit and other trees most suitable for supplying them to the Nikitsky garden. Over 12 years of tireless activity, Christian Steven has collected more than 450 species of exotic plants. The initial project involved the free placement of plants in combination with lawns and species areas. Here, for the first time, experiments on tobacco culture were started, which later received a very successful continuation. Vegetable plants were also tested. At the same time, Steven was much and with great enthusiasm engaged in research of the wild (natural) flora of the Crimea. In 1824, Christian Steven settled in Simferopol and transferred the management of the garden to his assistant Nikolai Andreevich Gartvis, leaving the general management of this institution. After the death of Bieberstein in 1826, Steven was appointed chief inspector of silk farming and for lack of time resigned the title of director of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, retaining, however, the main supervision of this institution. Gardener Gartvis was appointed director. Gartvis gave his whole life to the botanical garden and remained its director until the end of his 20 years. During this time, the collection of arboretum has more than doubled, strengthened ties with many trade organizations in Western Europe and America. Nikolai Andreevich collected a wonderful collection of conifers: giant sequoias from California, cedars, cypresses, pines. A special expedition visited the Caucasus and brought to the Crimea Caucasian fir (Abies nordmanniana), Oriental fir (Picea orientalis), rhododendrons, azaleas. Currently, the arboretum area is 40 hectares. In 1828, a school was organized to teach practical gardening in the Nikitsky Garden. At the same time, fan palms, magnolias, plane trees appeared. In the same 1828, Gartvis on the lands of the tract "Magarach", belonging to the Nikitsky Garden, laid a large Magarach vineyard and arranged the Magarach establishment of viticulture and winemaking. In 1866, after the death of Gartvis, Nikolai Tsabel became the director of the Imperial Nikitsky Garden. He directed the garden for 14 years, until 1880, paying great attention to viticulture. In 1869, Zabel transformed the Magarach Viticulture and Winemaking Institution into the Nikitsk School of Horticulture and Winemaking, with a 5-year course and the rights of lower agricultural schools of the I category. In addition, the school had higher practical courses in winemaking. All pupils in 1895 were 84, interns in higher courses - 14. From 1869 to the end of the XIX century, the school graduated 129 people. From the 1880s to the beginning of the XX century, extensive experimental work of the Nikitsky Garden ceased due to a decrease in its funding. During this period of the garden’s history, only the Nikitsk School of Viticulture and Winemaking successfully continued to exist. The educational activity completely absorbed the experimental work previously conducted in the garden, as reported in his memorandum of January 15, 1910, its director M. F. Shcherbakov. At the end of the XIX century, the Nikitsky Garden had about 116 dessiatines, of which 32 dessiatines were under vineyards, fruit and decorative gardens, gardens, nurseries and tobacco plantations (the vineyards occupied about 17 dessiatines). Wine was made from 2500 to 3000 buckets. In 1912, the centenary of the garden was celebrated - a solemn colonnade was built, made in the ancient style, at the entrance to the Lower Park, the general improvement of the garden territory was carried out. Since 1907, botanical research began to improve, interrupted after the departure of H. H. Steven. This was facilitated by the arrival of a large physiologist, the future academician V. N. Lyubimenko, who organized a botanical office in 1908, and outstanding botanists I. I. Kuznetsov and E. V. Wolf. In 1914, E. W. Wulf created a herbarium. Currently, it is the largest in the territory of the former USSR repository of flora of the Crimea, with more than 100 thousand herbarium sheets. Huge damage to the garden was caused by the occupation of German troops during the Great Patriotic War. The military destroyed a large number of plants, took out the most valuable herbarium collected by Wolf. Immediately after the liberation of Yalta in April 1944, restoration work began in the Nikitsky Garden. The director of the garden, Anatoly Safronovich Korverga, accomplished a true feat: after driving thousands of kilometers across Poland and Germany, he found the herbarium taken out in a small town near Berlin and delivered it to the Crimea.

Was under the jurisdiction of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after V. I. Lenin. The garden had three departments - Central, Steppe and Primorsky and introduction-quarantine nursery. In 1962 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. By 1973, the area of the garden with branches was about 960 hectares.By 1986 - 996 hectares.In December 2001, the arboretum of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, and in September 2009, the Crimean collection of the herbarium of the garden received the status of a national treasure of Ukraine - were included in the state register of scientific objects that make up the national heritage of Ukraine.

In 2005, the company "Console" illegally began mass development of 3.7 hectares of coastal territory of the Garden elite cottages. On this site was the famous collection of roses of the Nikitsky Garden, which numbered in the mid-1980s about 2000 varieties of domestic and foreign breeding.

In 2012, the Nikitsky Botanical Garden celebrated its 200th anniversary. In the spring of 2014, Crimea joined the Russian Federation. At the same time, in April 2014, the Presidium of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea by its resolution created the Crimean republican enterprise “Nikitsky Botanical Garden – Crimean Scientific Center”, to which all the property of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden of UAAN – the National Scientific Center was transferred. The director also changed, he was appointed Yuri Plugatar. The newly created organization was transferred to the management of the Ministry of Education, Science and Youth of Crimea. Chrysanthemum ball is held annually in Nikitsky BS. In addition, there are exhibitions of tulips, irises, lilies, clematis and roses.