Karelia. Tourism portal|Botanic garden of Petrozavodsk State University

The botanic garden was founded in 1951 on the northeast coast of Petrozavodsk bay of Onego lake, on the southern slope of the relic volcano. It is one of the most northern introduction points of Russia. It is located on the edge of natural distribution of many species of wood plants that makes it a link between the north Polarl-Alpine and St.-Petersburg botanic gardens in carrying out of step acclimatization of plants important for forestry, green construction and northern fruit growing. The first director of the botanic garden was M.Ivanov. From 1960 to 1993 its director was P.Krupyshev, and since 1993 it is supervised by A.Prokhorov. At participation of the Associate Professor of Petrozavodsk State University E.Ovchinnikova structure of the garden has been developed, foundations were laid for the arboretum, orchard, flower department, and nurseries. Employees of the Botanical garden studied pine, larch, fir, mountain ash, maple, oak, apple-tree patrimonial complexes to select the most valuable species, suitable for introduction in practice.

Formation and storage of databases on biodiversity of native flora is conducted with use of advanced information technologies. The basic exposition is the arboretum (12 hectares) comprised of species of trees and bushes of Asia, Europe and North America, created at active participation of A.Lantratova. The department of grassy plants in the botanic garden includes about 600 species, including a few hundred varieties of fruit and berry cultures suitable for cultivation in Karelia. The industrial nursery provides population of Petrozavodsk and other cities and towns of the republic with planting stock. In 1995-97 there have been drawn geological, geomorphological, soil, geobotanical maps of the territory, and description of flora, including higher vascular plants, bryoflora, lichenoflora has been made. The botanic garden presents about 30% of types of vegetative communities found in the republic. There grows more than 380 species of vascular plants, that makes 1/3 part of flora of Karelia. As of the beginning of the 21th century in the collection there are cultivated about 50 species of plants included in the Red Book of Karelia and in lists of protected species of plants of the republic. In the reserve territory there naturally grow 9 species of plants included in the Red Book of Karelia, 17 put on special lists of protected plants. Collections of the botanic garden are included in the information retrieval systemBotanic Collections of Russia on the Internet.