Zelyony Dom ('Green House') Orangery, Tver State University Botanical Garden

The garden that houses the orangery began as the private estate of a Tver merchant, Ilya Bobrov, on the bank of the Tvertsa: the official website dates its founding to 1875, other sources to 1879. It passed in 1898 to a natural-history teacher, became a children's park in the 1930s, and in 1938 was assigned to the Kalinin Pedagogical Institute to become a botanical garden. A small orangery appeared there before the war, then again after 1948; it vanished, along with the staff building, after the garden was handed to a municipal trust in 1973. Returned to the university in 1988-1989, the garden reopened to the public on 2 August 1996 after reconstruction.

The garden's director said in 2018 that the team had dreamed of a real orangery since the 1990s, when a small greenhouse was installed in which they struggled to grow a few plants. Funds for the new glasshouse were allocated under a state programme of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science supporting unique university facilities. The official inauguration took place on 27 December 2017 according to the garden (26 December according to Komsomolskaya Pravda), with public access from 2 January. Russian and foreign botanical gardens, organisations and private individuals in Tver gave plants and funds; almost every display carries the name of its sponsor.

The photographs published by the garden show white-framed windows on the walls and a covering of transparent panels on a frame of crossed mullions. The garden describes the interior layout. A circular path runs round the whole glasshouse and divides it into two large blocks: one-sided displays between the path and the wall, and all-round displays in the centre of the planting area. The entrance passes a small monochrome white garden, then an arch of white metal covered in jasmine that opens a view towards a Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei).

The displays combine plants, garden furniture, sculpture and decor. The garden says it drew on the best glasshouses in the world: Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Denver Botanic Gardens, the Beijing botanical garden, and above all the school of Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. In the warm season some potted plants move out into the park; they are duplicated by in-ground plantings so the displays stay decorative.

The garden counted more than 350 species, varieties and forms in 2019. The white garden brings together bay laurel, myrtle, rosemary and olive, with Cuphea hyssopifolia, Murraya exotica and Breynia nivosa. The 'spice route' shows black pepper, ginger, cardamom, Buddha's hand citron, tea, coffee, lime and taro. The Victorian parlour, with patinated furniture and a greyhound statue, mixes palms (Chamaedorea elegans, Rhapis multifida), ferns (Platycerium superbum), 'Tropicana' banana, papaya and cacao, aroids, orchids, heliconias and bromeliads. The Mediterranean courtyard has as its centrepiece an olive tree more than 140 years old, which the garden says is as old as the garden itself, surrounded by pomegranate, fig, Chamaerops humilis, oleander and acanthus. The tropical music salon is built around a Monstera deliciosa given by the regional philharmonic, an antique piano and violin, and a working Wardian case. The director said in 2018 that colleagues in Saint Petersburg had supplied plants descended from those in the imperial palace glasshouses.

The orangery is visited with the garden ticket, which also covers the 2.6 ha park and the art-exhibition room in the administration building. The garden is open all year, weekends and public holidays included; the orangery also hosts painting and sculpture shows, chamber concerts, poetry evenings, tastings and workshops. Allow an hour for the glasshouse and park, more in summer, when the potted plants (olive, bay, myrtle, rosemary) move out to the paths. The garden lies near the confluence of the Volga and the Tvertsa, on land protected as an archaeological site of the old trans-Volga quarter; combine it with the pond, the European steppe display and the collection of rare regional plants (170 vascular species).