Orangeries of the Kemerovo State University Botanical Garden (Botanichesky sad KemGU)

The Kemerovo botanical garden began in the 1990s in greenhouses on Michurin Street, built in the 1960s by a horticultural state farm to raise flowers, seedlings and saplings. The date is 1995 for the newspaper A42.ru, 1997 for NGS42, and 30 March 1998 in the passport of the Council of Botanical Gardens of Russia, which treats it as the registration of the municipal institution "Botanical Garden of the City of Kemerovo". The state farm at first handed over only two of its twenty-eight greenhouses. The glass-covered houses were in poor condition: in 2015 the director said she had waited almost twenty years for a move, and a staff member recalls lighting fires along the paths in winter to wrap the plants in smoke.

A move to Lesnaya Polyana was studied from 2013 with the district's developer, the Promstroy association. In August 2016 the contract for the orangeries and the administrative building went to the Moscow firm SU RST, the only bidder, at an initial price of 385.5 million roubles with completion due in December 2017. That month the mayor found the building heated and nearly ready, with two thirds of the plants already moved. In May 2018 local press quoted a cost of 401 million roubles and announced the opening for 12 June, the old premises closing on 24 May. For the city's centenary, large trees were dug out with their root balls and lifted by crane.

Placed with Kemerovo State University in 2020-2021, the garden joined the Council of Botanical Gardens of Russia in 2021; in March 2022 the federal title deeds were still awaited. The animal corner, first conceived as a contact zoo, closed during the transfer, leaving only fish and turtles.

According to the 2016 tender documents, reported by Interfax, the complex has two single-storey orangeries with a three-storey administrative block rising between them on a technical level. That block now holds a conference hall, about ten offices and a 240 m² café space with two balconies, each looking onto one of the orangeries. The tender called for stained-glass windows on the central block and transparent structures for the orangeries; the official website describes a large glass building with high ceilings. In 2015 the developer rejected a standard design: the halls were to be taller than usual for large tropical plants, up to 11 m, with a 120 m glazed facade along the road. Later sources give 12 m (city hall, 2017) or 13 m (local press, 2022), against 4 to 5 m in the old greenhouses.

The orangeries cover 3,200 m² (3,311.7 m² in the official passport) within a complex of about 5,000 m². Automatic controls read temperature and wind, open the windows and adjust the heating; a gas boiler plant serves the building, and meltwater and rain collected on the roof feed the irrigation, by misting and overhead sprinklers. Staff regret the lack of technical balconies for reaching the lamps and heat guns.

According to the official website, the tropical orangery, kept at 25 °C or more, is divided into four "continents" (Central and South America, Australia, Africa, Asia) and holds 1,366 plants; the subtropical orangery, at about 25 °C in summer and 15 °C in winter, is divided into seven zones (Europe, Asia with China and Japan, Australia, America, the Mediterranean, Africa, Mexico) and holds 1,253 plants. The official passport counts more than 1,000 species and 2,626 specimens.

The site names calamondin, peace lily, orchids, agaves and cacti, amaryllis, urceolina, yellow clivia, indoor rhododendron and pelargoniums; fruit trees form a large group whose fruit ripens all year. A 2023 visit report adds palms (Chinese windmill palm, dwarf fan palm, Washington palm), ginkgo, myrtle, bananas, a jackfruit, a papaya and an araucaria that has grown almost to the roof. The ponds hold fish and red-eared terrapins, which visitors sometimes leave there quietly.

The building stands at the entrance to the Lesnaya Polyana district: according to a travel blog, it appears on the left of the road about 8 km after the Kuzbass bridge over the Tom. A visit begins in an entrance hall with aquariums, then passes through the cooler, drier subtropical orangery before a connecting passage, also lined with aquariums, leads to the more humid tropical house. Plants carry their scientific name and region of origin; a QR code provides a self-guided route, and the garden also offers guided tours, workshops and photo sessions. In winter the snow behind the glass contrasts with the greenery. The open-air Kuzbass Botanical Garden, 186 hectares near Lake Sukhovskoye, is a separate visit and has few exotic plants.