A.V. Fomin Botanical Garden

Kyiv, Ukraine, Ukraine

---

A.V. Fomin Botanical Garden in Kyiv is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Ukraine, founded in 1839 as the university garden for today’s Taras Shevchenko National University and located near the university’s historic “red building” in the city center.

It occupies about 22–22.5 hectares and is divided into a park zone freely open to the public and a scientific zone with greenhouses and orangeries that can be visited on guided tours, making it both a research institution and a popular urban green space. The garden holds roughly 8,000–9,000 plant taxa, including many tropical and subtropical species and at least 143 listed in the Red Data Book of Ukraine, and is especially noted for its very large collections of succulents, palms and magnolias.

Its tall palm greenhouse, built to house some of the oldest and tallest palm trees in northern Eurasia, is among the highest of its kind in the world and symbolizes the garden’s long tradition of cultivating exotic plants. Since 1935 the garden has borne the name of botanist Aleksandr V. Fomin, whose efforts helped preserve rare collections during hardships such as the severe winter of 1919–1920 and wartime occupation, reinforcing its role in plant conservation, education and botanical science in Ukraine.