Enjoying the silence in today’s turbulent, urban world is a sort of gourmet pleasure: a rare treat, valued by few. Silence provokes questions and makes one face his or her inner self. In Kyiv, the city of opportunity and bustling energy of young minds, a tete-a-tete with your own ego is virtually impossible: the incessant motion leaves little room for hermits. Like any other capital, this city, too, succumbs to Time: skyscrapers of glass and concrete, traffic jams, and the habit of following the stream. One needs to be able to read between the lines to see that there is another Kyiv, lurking in time-warped little gardens and courtyards, in the cracks between pavement blocks, or on the faded roofs of Andriivsky Uzviz.
Our capital has amazing lungs, two botanical gardens. It was Hryshko Botanical Garden that the students of Den’s Summer School of Journalism chose to spend a day at. An instructive stroll with the guide Hanna VERHUN was an oasis of welcome silence for our budding journalists and reminded them that insight into things comes from an awareness of one’s affinity to Nature.
In times when we were hardly seen behind a counter at a store, tall trees seemed to us giants which guarded our peace. In botanical gardens they still have this role. You need to throw back your head to say hi to their tops. These trees have witnessed three generations of humans pass. Some of them are 65 or even 75 years old. A tree called Douglasia, discovered by scholars David Douglas and Archibald Mendes, is the first to see the sunrise every morning. This is the world’s third tallest tree.
As children, we often dreamed of finding a land lost in time and space. In these botanical gardens you can indeed stumble upon such time warps, where you will get lost and have no idea of your own whereabouts. Then you only have to listen to the ever-whispering voice of the forest. The juniper invites you to breathe in its aroma and ease your breath. With a bit of luck, you will hear how to make tasty condiments from its cones that look like berries. In America, juniper is called the “pencil tree.” It is used there to make pencils which, when sharpened, exhale a sweet smell.
The Eucommia tree will desperately beg you for attention. In Soviet time, scholars hoped to extract rubber from the substance in its leaves. However, the technology was too costly, so the inventors eventually had to give up the idea. A little farther off, all by itself, stands the “black tree,” favored by Catherine de’Medici, the notorious “queen of poisoners.” She served her enemies wine with cups, made of the timber of this tree (also known as the yew). Anyone who would drink wine out of such a cup died in agony, due to a certain substance which blocked the cardiac muscle. Maybe, this is why the yew is perceived as a symbol of mourning. Yet Ukrainians found a use for this tree: after soaking in a particular way, in the Transcarpathian region it was used as a cure for tuberculosis and cholera.
In the contemporary global world, where people take elevators and escalators rather than walk up or down stairs, the idea of building homes entirely of timber seems strange. Larch was very popular timber at a certain point in time. Its record includes, for example, sailing with tsar Peter the First’s fleet – he built his ships of larch. This tree has seen a lot of love, too: the city of Venice rests on larch dams, which are safe from rotting for five centuries. Can you imagine that? Most ancient houses in Poland have survived due to the fact that their frames are made of larch.
Kyiv’s botanical gardens are home to fairy-tales. These lianas look just as if Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) had been swaying on them. Not far off, in the rose garden, Andersen’s Gerda wept bitterly for Kai over the charmed rose bushes. Near the main gate are tall hedges, just as in Joan Rowling’s story, and you can’t get rid of the feeling that you might run into Harry Potter among those green walls, or maybe even find the Goblet of Fire. And then you think you have just glimpsed Lewis Carroll’s Alice run past, and next, before you know, you are lost in green mazes of shrubs and trees.
In the “Green Study” sector you are welcomed by a hornbeam tree. “Even in the winter its crooked branches create an atmosphere of mystery. These botanical gardens were designed so as to amaze and excite guests all year round,” explains Hanna the guide.
Next is the “Climbers” sector, with its sprawling lianas. Planted very dense, they envelope the walls and create an impenetrable wall without taking up much room. Many landscape architects favored this plant, even in the Middle Ages – for instance, in Lviv, with its maze of narrow streets, “green architects” created cascades of these climbers.
The botanical garden is the place where continents meet. Various theme sectors house the flora of the Far East, Cenral Asia, Americas, the Altay, Ukrainian steppes, the Carpathians, and many other distant areas. Flowers, which seem so common and traditional for our country, might in fact be natives of other lands. For instant, marigolds, praised in a popular Ukrainian song, come from the hot Mexico, home to almost 50 varieties of this plant. Disappointing as it is, but Ukrainian mallows look rather like weeds, whereas the ornamental varieties were brought from Asia. Many willows also come from other countries, while the Russians’ favorite, the birch, is autochthonous: there are nine varieties, native to Ukraine.
Curiously, all plants in the botanical garden have their own IDs, just like any proper Ukrainian citizen. Before importing or planting something, scholars test and study new samples. This practice of “medicals” for plants is becoming increasingly common everywhere in Europe. “Quantity does not necessarily mean quality.” The staff of the garden always stick to this rule.
The collection of annual flowers have always been the gem of the garden, a sight for sore eyes. In Hryshko Botanical Garden they grow in the section “Seasons.” However, few visitors realize that each flower deserves an individual “thank you.” Such bright and fragrant beauty requires a lot of effort and time. “Such plants are very time and effort consuming: first you have to gather seeds, process them, sow them in spring, grow seedlings, water them, and then move them to the open ground – all for a short period of blooming. But how beautiful and bright it is!” says the guide.
Yet working in the botanical garden is no bed of roses. The staff have to face numerous challenges, offered by the contemporary red tape. Though the area of Hryshko Botanical Garden has remained unchanged since the day it was founded (more than one hundred hectares), Kyiv’s demographic flexibility has certain boundaries. Thus today certain individuals will encroach upon the capital’s green lungs. Verhun, who has been working here for almost six years, is well aware of this sort of plague. She shared some of the problems:
“The land nearby, which wealthy people are increasingly more often choose for their country houses, are very expensive. Given the scarcity of the maintenance budget, which the garden gets from Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences, such revenue would prove more than welcome. Yet I hope that we will be able to resist such deals, because it only takes one – and then the process gets out of hand.”
Thus to help the garden keep its head above water, all 350 staff work hard. It is impossible to do without sponsors, too. Over the recent years, the garden became a venue for various art events, for instance, the First International Contemporary Sculpture Festival. This proves that the principle of universalism penetrate all spheres of human activity today. As to the staff, they welcome such initiatives, since they consider their workplace not only a natural science laboratory, but also an area for artistic quests. At a certain point in time, these parks saw the poets Volodymyr Sosiura and Maksym Rylsky, and heard the opera singer Ivan Kozlovsky hum some tunes, overwhelmed by this green beauty. But the most faithful “lodgers” are perhaps the young painters, whose canvases capture the soul of flowers. During the lilac season, one of them counted one hundred shades of green in this floral universe. Beautiful, isn’t it?
Despite the mind-blowing speed of the modern life, people still keep certain sacral institutes. Nature remains one of such eternal treasuries of human spirit. Kyiv’s botanical gardens belong there, too. So let us hope that the harsh reality of today will never cross the threshold of this amazing home for human mind.
