Nikitsky Botanical Garden was founded in 1812 and is one of the oldest research institutions in our country. The founder of the Garden — a prominent scientist-biologist of the XIX century Christian Christianovich Staven. From the first days of its existence, the Garden was designed to promote the accelerated development of agricultural production in the south of the country on the basis of introduction, acclimatization, selection and wide distribution of southern fruit, flower, ornamental, new technical, medicinal and other useful plants, study and active use of local plant resources. In order to quickly enrich domestic agricultural production with new plants, the founders of the Garden established strong business and scientific ties with leading botanical institutions in Europe, Asia and America. This made it possible to gather here unique collections of species, varieties and forms of various crops.
At present, according to the estimates of leading experts in the field of botany, the NBS is among the world’s most famous botanical institutions and the largest collections of gene pool of valuable plants. The NBS is the only repository in our country of species and varietal diversity of southern fruit crops, including more than 11,000 varieties of peach, apricot, alicha, fig, pomegranate, olive, ziziphus, cherry, persimmon. There are unique collections of ornamental woody and herbaceous plants, floral and aromatic crops.
Garden chrysanthemum is one of the oldest ornamental crops. The homeland of chrysanthemums is considered to be China and Japan, where they were cultivated 2500 years ago. The first 14 varieties of garden chrysanthemum in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden (NBS) appeared in 1812-1820, thanks to the first director of the Garden Christian Stevens, and breeding work actively began to take place in 1939. Since 1953 there is an annual exhibition of chrysanthemums in the open ground.
The collection has about 350 varieties of small-flowered and large-flowered chrysanthemums, which includes both varieties of Nikita Botanical Garden selection and foreign selection.
The exhibition presents chrysanthemums of all colors and shades (from white to green), as well as various forms.