: 44 ( ) 2016-2018 . -

Peter the Great Botanical Garden has a high tourist appeal, and its attendance is increasing year by year. Garden’s guests get acquainted with its plant’s collections through the intermediary of guides, therefore, the task of developing a methodology for teaching highly qualified guides is becoming ever more urgent. This publication is devoted to the analysis of the accumulated experience of organizing courses for the guides training in 2016 and 2017, which in general can be characterized as successful.

The paper presents results of complex 16 year-long introduction trials of Iris pseudacorus L. in the Donetsk Botanical Garden. Morphology of vegetative and generative organs, phenologic rhythms, vegetative and generative reproduction capacity, ontogeny, introduction success were studied. The study has shown that introduced I. pseudacorus is characterized by high adaptability, i.e. annual flowering, fruitage and massive self-seeding. In the course of seed reproduction seedlings reach the following successive age stages: germ, juvenile (the 1st year of development), immature (2nd year), virginal (3rd year), early generative (4–5th years), mature generative (5–6th years), late generative (10–11th years), subsenile (12–13th years). The research data allow including the species into a range of ornamental perennials plants for landscaping in the region. These plants are fit for landscape expositions and mix borders.

03 - 07 October 2018 in the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarov RAS in St. Petersburg held the Second International Scientific and Practical Conference "Botanical Gardens in the modern world: science, education, management." It was devoted to discussing the current state of affairs and ways to increase the efficiency of interaction between organizations of science and culture, society and business; expanding the ways and tools of interaction, information exchange, promotion of scientific knowledge and cultural heritage; familiarity with the best practices of cultural and educational activities in historical parks, botanical gardens and protected areas. The issues of the conference were focused on the staff of botanical gardens, cultural institutions, environmental institutions, representatives of non-governmental public organizations whose activities are related to the subject of the conference, as well as teachers of higher and secondary vocational educational institutions.

The sensory garden is a new display that appeared in MSU Botanic Garden (Apothecary Garden) last year. It has become an important tool for working with disabled visitors and small children. We are looking into ways of compiling a plan of the display and a list of the plants it includes.

The Botanical garden has a special language, through which visitors can take new information and skills. One of the forms of communication of the garden with visitors is a game, festive events and excursions. Festive events cover a wide audience, and are able to interest and captivate people with different interests and initial level of training. The holiday can be both a large-scale event and a thematic excursion with elements of games.

There are representatives of 27 families, 60 genera, 306 species and 44 intraspecific taxons (3 varians, 17 forms and 24 classes), 22 hybrids, 372 taxon in total, 792 samples in the collections of woody introducents. The collection is dominated by plants of cultural origin, grown from seeds. 88 percents of plants are characterised by score of winter hardiness from 1 to 3. More than a third of the plants have been in testing for 31-40 years. Generative development is typical for most plants.

The list shows the seeds of plants cultivated in the open ground and greenhouses of the Botanical Garden of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Science and of those collected in nature.

It is hard to lose a teacher, who used to direct you. It is sad and bitter to lose a colleague, who you used to work with for many years. It is unbearably painful to lose a friend, with whom you have gone through so much together. Doctor of biology, Professor, director and creator of the Kuban Subtropical Botanical Garden, chairman of Dendrology Commission under the Botanical Gardens of Russia Council, chairman of the Regional Council of Botanical Gardens of Southern Russia, Yuri Karpun passed away. The great introductor, who created Russia’s richest dendrocollection, inspirer and chief editor of the “Catalogue of Cultivated Wood Plants of Russia”, member of our journal’s editorial board passed away. Yuri Karpun’s deeds and projects were numerous and varied. He was interested in many things and he gave all of his endless enthusiasm and great talent to everything. He was engaged in saving the sacred trees of Palestine and developing information technologies for botanical gardens, preparing new generations of great botanists and in organizational work in the Botanical Gardens of Russia Council. He had a special understanding of our world and expertise in haute cuisine. It just so happened, that last March at the "Strategy of Creating Sustainable Dendrological Collections" national conference we founded a “Bauhinia Acuminata” order – friends and colleagues, who gathered together to praise the 40th anniversary of the great masterpiece - Kuban Subtropical Botanical Garden. Dear Yuri, we all remember about our promises and prospects. Certainly, all of them will be fulfilled and your work will be continued. I suppose, you are now going to have a lot of work in the first botanical garden ever. Good luck!!!

A retrospective report of the Director of the Subtropical Botanical Garden of Kuban, Karpun YN, at the opening of the First National Dendrological Conference, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Garden, held on March 14-16, 2017 in Sochi