Sochi Botanical Garden is a unique monument not only to the flora of the southern latitudes, but also to landscape gardening art. Today it is a great vacation spot for guests and residents of the resort region. On its territory grows more than two thousand of the most diverse species and varieties of trees and shrubs brought from Australia and Japan, America and the Mediterranean countries. Currently, the arboretum is subordinate to the Sochi National Park.
Landscape
Sochi Botanical Garden covers an area of more than 50 hectares. The design of the park is sustained in various styles. The center is a tribute to the palace delights. These are snow-white stairs, generously decorated with stucco moldings, balustrades, gypsum sculptures and magnificent terraces. The rest of the garden looks a bit simpler.
Forest tracts harmoniously combine with open meadow spaces. The rarest specimens of exotic shrubs serve as a natural setting for recreational areas. This unique Sochi park in March is especially beautiful. A summer house, the so-called hunting lodge, is built on its territory, there is a flower greenhouse, farm buildings.
Structure
The modern arboretum consists of three parts. The lower one is the youngest. It is located opposite the main park. To get into it, you must cross the highway. Pines and cypresses grow mainly in this part of the park. You can also find daylilies, thickets of bamboo, roses and fragrant magnolias. The address of the Botanical Garden in Sochi: Resort Avenue, house 74.
A long underground passage leads to the middle park. Perhaps this is the oldest and most interesting, from the point of view of botany, garden area. It presents more than eight dozen pines brought here from the most remote corners of the world. And he boasts the rarest varieties of palm trees that winter successfully in the Russian subtropics and bloom in the Sochi Arboretum in March.
Sequoia dendron also feels great. Imagine only, her relatives live more than six thousand years and reach a hundred meters in height! Cypresses, yuccas, agaves, nymphs, papyri, hyacinths grow in the park.
The upper zone of the Sochi Botanical Garden is also considered relatively young. She was defeated after the end of World War II. All plants in this part of the park are organized according to the geography of their growth.
sights
The first attraction that occurs on the way of a traveler who finds himself in the arboretum is the colonnade of the entrance group. It is decorated with balusters and granite flowerpots. Immediately nearby was a monument to Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov. He is the founding father of the park.
Paths in the park are paved with tiles. There are stone and granite sidewalks leading into the rotunda. Massive pedestals with lions resting on them are placed. Everywhere flower beds and flower beds. In order not to rush and explore a large part of the territory, you will need to devote it all day.
Ancient arbors towering over the pointed peaks of palm trees beckon with coolness. They offer enchanting views of the garden and surroundings. Information plates are placed next to priceless botanical samples. They reveal the full name of the plant, the country of its origin and approximate age.
Master's estate
In the old part of the park is the house of Sergei Khudekov. Today in the villa "Hope" operates a park museum. Another attraction of the arboretum is the Japanese Garden. Thin streams of brooks slowly murmur in it, through which graceful wooden bridges are thrown.
Once in Obzornaya Polyana, do not deny yourself the pleasure to linger and enjoy the panorama of Central Sochi. Behind the high-rise city building, which surrounds the resort with a dense ring, one can see the bluest Black Sea.
Palm Alley is another unique place that the tropical bowels of the Botanical Garden hide. The Sochi Arboretum also includes Sequoia Grove, Glade of Dwarves, dolmens, stone grotto, greenhouse and aviary, which contains ostriches.
Historical reference
As for the history of this unusual park, it takes us to the beginning of the XX century. It was then that Sergei Nikolaevich acquired 50 hectares of land. They stretched along the highway following from Sochi to Sukhumi. The site was located two kilometers from the city limits of the resort. The best gardeners and landscape designers of that time were invited to work on the project of the park, and subsequently on its implementation.
The first seedlings of trees were delivered to the Botanical Garden of Sochi from parks in nearby southern cities. A large number of samples were brought from Yalta and Sukhumi. Later, Mediterranean plants were acquired.
In 1917, Sergey Khudekov left his estate and his park. The land was fragmented into small plots and sold. Until the 1920s, the estate was dominated by the White Guards. In just a few years, the richest collection of plants was destroyed, and the house itself was looted. The restoration of the arboretum began in 1924 after the final change of power in the country.