Park & garden · Yunusabad District

Tashkent Botanical Garden

A 65.4-hectare botanical garden founded on its present site in 1950 — a research institution of the Academy of Sciences with thousands of species and varieties.

Soviet era19502 h1 min read

Photo: Arina Pan · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

History

Tashkent's first botanical garden, 8 hectares in size, was created in 1922 in the former garden of the Governor-General of Turkestan and passed to the Academy of Sciences in 1944. The present 80-hectare garden was founded in 1950 and worked as a research institute from 1968; named after academician F. N. Rusanov, it belongs to the Institute of Botany of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences. In 1995, 22 hectares were cleared for the new zoo next door, leaving 65.4 hectares today.

The collection

The collection numbers about 6,000 species, forms and cultivars, mostly from temperate zones (4,500 species by a 2013 count). Staff research plant introduction and have published a 14-volume 'Dendrology of Uzbekistan'. More than 30 bird species nest, pass through or winter here, and about 65,000 people visited in 2011.

Ornamental and fruit trees, berry shrubs and medicinal plants are among the species being trialled, and tulip-tree saplings are raised here for the city's streets. From 1993 to 2004 the garden was a specially protected natural area.