The Main Botanical Garden in Moscow is the largest in Russia and one of the largest in the world. It was created in 1945, much later than the Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg. However, if in St. Petersburg the garden appeared on the site of a small Apothecary garden in the city center, then in Moscow an area of 350 hectares in the Ostankino district of the capital was allocated for the creation of a Botanical Garden.
The Botanical Garden in Moscow is named after academician Nikolay Tsitsin, who became its first director. The gigantic territory of the garden creates some difficulties for walking, as many interesting sites are located at a considerable distance from each other. As the size of the garden is so large, part of the territory is more like a forest, since it is quite difficult to process huge spaces of the garden.
To visit the Botanical Garden of Moscow, it is better to plan most of the day to take a leisurely stroll through its alleys. The territory of the Botanical Garden is connected to the territory of VDNH and Ostankino Park. So you can visit them too. The parks are separated by the Kamenka River, but have no fences.
A walk through the Main Botanical Garden is best to start near the Vladykino metro station. It is located next to the Laboratory Building of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was erected in 1945 and became a symbol of the Moscow Botanical Garden. Academician Tsitsin and his team began to collect here and cultivate a collection of plants of the botanical garden. This work continues, and now the collection of the Main Botanical Garden has 8 thousand plant species and 8 thousand varieties, that is, more than 16 thousand taxons.
In botany and biology, a taxon is a group of several populations of organisms that science defines as a single whole. A similar definition can be found in the Old Testament of the Bible, when God, before the flood, ordered Noah to build an Ark and place "each creature in a pair" in it, so that later all the diversity of the animal and plant would develop from them again. The collection of taxons in the Botanical Garden of Moscow is one of the largest in the world.
The Botanical Garden of Moscow is divided into several zones. The northern part is occupied by an Arboretum, and in the center is an Oak Grove. On the east side there are various types of gardens: a shade garden, a garden of continuous flowering, a garden of coastal plants, an exposition of perennial plants.
The buildings of greenhouses are located in the south-western part of the Botanical Garden of Moscow. There is a Stock Greenhouse, as well as a large building of a New Greenhouse. They contain a large number of tropical plants from various continents. There is a rose garden next to the greenhouses.
The pride of the Main Botanical Garden in Moscow is the Japanese Garden. Its territory is 2.7 hectares. There is a Japanese rock garden nearby. The Japanese garden is made according to all the canons of Japanese garden art, and some trees were even planted by Japanese ambassadors in Russia. Japanese pavilions have been built in the garden, and a Japanese pagoda has been erected in the center of the garden. In the Japanese Garden, plants and trees that grow in Japan are planted, including Japanese cherry trees.
