Apothecaries' Garden

The Apothecaries' Garden is Russia's oldest botanical garden, located on Prospekt Mira and belonging to the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The garden covers about 6.64 hectares and combines collections of living plants, greenhouses, and a landscape park with centuries-old trees. The site is officially recognized as a historical monument and a protected 18th-century garden-and-park ensemble, making it not only a scientific institution but also one of the city's recognizable green spaces.

The garden was founded by decree of Peter the Great in 1706, on what was then the outskirts of the capital, not far from the Sukharev Tower. The state plantation of medicinal herbs, previously located by the Kremlin walls near the pharmacy of the Gostiny Dvor, was moved there — which gave the new site its name. The initial collection was gathered from plants of the palace garden at Izmailovo, and according to legend, the tsar himself planted several conifers there so that his subjects could learn to distinguish between tree species. The garden was directed by invited German botanists, among them Traugott Gerber and Friedrich Stephan, who studied the flora of the Moscow region. In 1805 the dilapidated garden was bought by Moscow University, and it became one of the centers of Russian botany.

The modern landscape combines the historic layout with later reconstructions: in the 1990s the master plan for the site was developed by British architect Kim Wilkie. An old 18th-century pond, waterproofed with Gzhel clay, has survived; an arboretum with shaded avenues has been laid out, and a garden of medicinal herbs has been arranged after the model of medieval monastery gardens. The central structure is the Palm House, built in 1891, home to orchids, vines, and tree ferns.

The garden has weathered difficult periods more than once: the fire of 1812 destroyed a significant part of its buildings and plantings, and during the revolutionary years almost all the greenhouses had to be closed for lack of fuel. There were bright episodes too: in the summer of 1906 the giant water lily Victoria regia bloomed in the garden for the first time, and about ten thousand people came to see it in a single day. In 1973 the site received the status of a historical and cultural monument of Moscow, and after a new university garden was laid out on the Lenin Hills in 1950, it came to be known as the historic grounds of the MSU Botanical Garden.

Today the Apothecaries' Garden is an active scientific center with collections of succulents, carnivorous plants, and one of the country's largest orchid collections, part of which is open for viewing in the greenhouses. The grounds host seasonal exhibitions — from a spring display of bulbous flowers to a winter show of tropical plants — and on the days of major festivals the number of visitors exceeds seven thousand per day.

Over three centuries the garden has evolved from a state plantation of medicinal herbs into a university scientific center and a popular urban space. The preservation of its historic layout, combined with the constant renewal of its collections, has made the Apothecaries' Garden a rare example of a living open-air museum, where scientific work coexists with the leisure of city residents.