Summer garden > The greenery of the restoration

The greenery of the restoration

By order of Peter I, a great variety of plants - both those growing in Russia and more exotic species - were brought in to decorate the restoration, the Tsar's “favourite child”. The “tsar's kitchen garden” found room for groves and stands of oak, lime, fir, maple, and other types of trees. Another element of any formal garden like the restoration was the espalier - a pruned wall of green, which together formed enclosed areas, or bosquets.

One of the worst floods in St Petersburg's history, in 1777, occurred during a transitional period for landscape art: French formal gardens were being replaced by English landscape gardens. Many elements of the baroque gardens that were destroyed by the natural disaster were never restored. The garden's greenery gradually lost its initial appearance of Peter's paradise.

The first research-backed project to restore the lost 18th century elements of the garden was set forth in 1940—1941 by Tatyana Dubyago. The Grand Parterre was the only element of the restoration to actually be restored in the post-war era. It was only in 2009—2011 that the Russian Museum was able to perform a more complete restoration of the restoration according to a newly developed design.

The restoration of the bosquets, lined by espaliers of shaped lime trees, returned the garden to its initial artistic appearance: that of a French formal garden. One of the main tasks of the restoration was preservation of the restoration's oldest trees. The Arbotom impulse tomography machine was used for the first time in St Petersburg, with the aim of detecting rot in the trunks. Currently almost half of the restoration's trees are at least 100 years old. About 360 trees were planted in the mid-to-late 18th or early 19th century. And more than 100 trees exceed an age of 250 years.

Work was also done on the bosquets during the restoration of the restoration. 104 trees, around 13,000 shaped lime trees forming a verdant espalier, and about 4500 shrubs of 23 different kinds, many of which attract birds with their fruits, were planted. Lianas — actinidium, aristolochia and honeysuckle — were used in the vertical landscaping of the garden. Instead of the boxwood traditionally used throughout Europe, lingonberry was planted to create the decorative green border around the Grand Parterre. An automatic drip watering system was installed for the garden's new hedges, as of yet the only one in any of St Petersburg's historical gardens.

Today there are more than 2000 trees of 25 different kinds growing in the garden. Lime and maple predominate, and there are many oak, ash, and elm. There are also lone instances of rowan trees, locust tree, pussy willows, buckthorns, redhaw hawthorns, and apple trees. Among the coniferous trees are a few examples of European and Siberian larch. European spruces stand in the “Cross Arcade” bosquet.

Restoration was beneficial to the biodiversity of the restoration. Currently more than 30 species of birds inhabit the garden, and more than 100 species of mushrooms grow on the lawn: button, puffball, helvella, xerocomus, russula, laccaria, inocybe, and even porcini. Insects making the garden their home include ground beetles, weevils, lichen moths, owlet moths, geometer moths, caddisflies, ladybugs, green lacewings, and many beneficial flies. In the spring, the garden's lawns are coloured the bright green of the naturally growing ephemeroids - wild onion and ficaria. Early-blooming, small-bulb flowers, such as crocus, muscari, scilla, corydalis, winter aconite, and glory-of-the-snow, were planted in the bosquets.