The history of the garden near the village of Nikita in Crimea began in the summer of 1811, when the decree was signed on the establishment of ​​the Imperial botanical garden in Crimea. 375 acres of land were immediately bought from a local landowner and Christian von Steven was appointed a director. He got down to business with zest: made roads in the rocks, ensured water supply and brought fertile land on oxen from the south of Ukraine – while “Moscow, razed by a fire,” was groaning under the boots of Napoleon’s soldiers they were making first implantations in the Imperial Botanical Garden. In response to von Steven's letters, seeds of exotic plants were sent to Crimea from all over the world and then spread across Russia from there. In 1818, the first was landed here. There, the first tea-plant was planted and only then its seeds were transferred to Georgia.

Today, the famous Garden is home to innumerable plant species, including the California live oak, unique for the CIS, and Parrotia persica, or the Persian ironwood. And also, a real fossil – a ginkgo, a tree that practically cannot be found in the wild, a true dinosaur in the world of flora.