Sukhumi Botanical Garden

The Sukhumi Botanical Garden lies in the centre of the city, on Dimitri Gulia Street, within Sokhumi Municipality. The garden covers 30 hectares; the display section occupies 5 hectares and is divided by paths into 50 plots. By data of the early twenty-first century almost five thousand species and varieties of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants grow here; the Georgian Soviet Encyclopaedia counted more than 4,500 species, among them up to 1,200 tropical ones.

The garden's chief curiosity is a Caucasian lime that was growing here before the garden was founded and is now about 250 years old; its trunk is 3 metres across. In 1877 the Ottomans cut the tree down, but it did not die: it grew again to 20 metres, and although the hurricane of 1987 carried off most of its crown it still flowers and bears fruit. Here too stand the oldest sequoia in the former Soviet Union, planted in 1848, and the first metasequoia on the Black Sea coast, raised from seed brought by the Arnold Arboretum expedition and planted around 1950.

North of the garden, on the slope of Mount Trapetsia, is the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy with the monkey nursery founded in 1927. The garden belongs to the Institute of Botany and is open daily from 9 to 18.

The garden's history begins in the 1830s, when Bagrinovsky, doctor of the Sukhumi garrison and a knowledgeable botanist and gardener, laid out a garden beside his house; 1838 is taken as the official date of foundation. In 1840 the garden caught the attention of Lieutenant-General Nikolai Raevsky, commander of the Black Sea coastal line, and with the permission of Emperor Nicholas I it was taken over by the treasury as the "Sukhum-Kale Military Botanical Garden". The military department drew from it the seeds and seedlings of fruit, vegetables and ornamental plants for the coastal forts; the garden was also meant to bring new plants into the region, tea and citrus above all.

During the Crimean War of 1853–1856 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 the garden was laid waste by the Ottomans. In 1889 it passed from the military to the Ministry of State Property, and in 1894 its new director P. Tatarinov made it the base of the Sukhumi horticultural and agricultural experimental station and brought 45 species of agave, 49 of palm and 150 of conifer from South America and the Mediterranean. Nikolai Vavilov visited the garden repeatedly in 1926–1940; at the end of the 1930s the 120-hectare Sukhumi dendropark, planted at the end of the nineteenth century by the patron Nikolai Smetsky, was joined to it. In 1972 the garden became the Research Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

The war of 1992–1993 did the garden enormous damage: more than a hundred shells fell on its grounds, and 30 % of the trees and shrubs, 80–85 % of the herbaceous plants and 90–95 % of the glasshouse plants were lost. Rebuilding the collections began as soon as the war ended.

The garden is in the centre of Sukhumi at 22 Dimitri Gulia Street. It is open daily from 9 to 18; check the terms of entry locally.

Abkhazia is an occupied territory. Under Georgian law entry to the region is lawful only through the Enguri crossing; entry from Russia is a breach of Georgian law. Check the current conditions of movement before travelling.