Astana Botanical Garden Orangeries (Botanikalyq Baq)

Astana Botanical Garden grew out of a decision taken on 11 April 2012 at a meeting attended by the President of Kazakhstan. On 5 September that year the Institute of Botany and Phytointroduction began preparing the scientific case for a botanical garden in the capital, and the first saplings were planted the same year with help from local residents.

The garden opened on 2 July 2018, marking twenty years of Astana as the country's capital. It is a branch of the Main Botanical Garden in Almaty, and according to a travel guide its creation cost 23 billion tenge. An administrative and laboratory building of 3,400 m² was completed in December 2018, and almost 18 hectares are set aside for research on plant propagation, breeding and introduction.

The two orangeries are part of the garden's facilities; as early as 2018 their building was put forward for an architecture prize on account of its original glazing. The sources consulted give neither the exact date on which they came into use nor the name of their architect. The garden is protected as a natural area of national importance.

The complex consists of two separate buildings, mapped individually in OpenStreetMap: an orangery for tropical plants and an orangery for desert plants, about a hundred metres apart. Each takes a pyramidal form and opens up through large glazed walls that let sunlight reach the plants unhindered. It was this glazed envelope, considered original, that earned the building its nomination for an architecture prize in 2018.

The technical equipment is designed for largely automatic cultivation, with fully automated drip irrigation and misting systems in both houses. Temperatures are held between 24 and 26 °C throughout the year. The sources consulted do not give the dimensions of the buildings or describe their load-bearing structure in detail.

The tropical house holds more than 1,100 plants belonging to about 70 species, among them palms, lemon and orange trees, ficus, dracaenas and ferns. The second house is a succulent hall given over to cacti and aloes.

Figures differ between sources: one guide counts more than 60 species of cacti and aloes, another more than 200 cactus species, and the Russian Wikipedia article lists 222 species and 76 cultivars, forms and varieties across the two orangeries. Outside the glasshouses, the garden holds more than 90,000 trees and shrubs from nurseries in Asia, Europe and North America.

The orangeries stand within the botanical garden on the left bank of the Ishim in Yesil district, inside the block bounded by Turkistan, Orynbor, Kabanbay Batyr and Bukhar Zhyrau streets. Since the garden opened, the glasshouses have become a favourite backdrop for photographers.

A visit extends easily into the garden itself, a square of roughly one kilometre per side laid out around a large central oval planted in patterns inspired by Eastern motifs, with 11 km of cycle paths and as many running tracks. The Astana Arena stadium, the Alau ice palace and the Abu Dhabi Plaza shopping centre are close by.