Orangery of the South Ural Botanical Garden-Institute (Oranzhereya YuUBSI)

Ufa's botanical garden was founded in 1932 within the Bashkir Research Institute for the Socialist Reconstruction of Agriculture, building on the Milovka botanical nursery created in 1928. It first occupied half a hectare near Dyoma station, moved in 1934 to Sipaylovo and then, in 1938-1939, to its present site near the village of Novikovka, now the Zelyonaya Roshcha district, after the construction of a pulp and paper mill forced it to relocate.

The orangery dates from those years. A first wooden building, heated by flues, was put up between 1936 and 1944 with the involvement of gardener Terenty Nikitin. The garden became the Bashkir Botanical Garden of republican importance in 1945 and joined the USSR Academy of Sciences network in 1952. It became an independent institute in the early 1990s (1991 or 1992 depending on the source) and now belongs to the Ufa Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The present orangery, with a frame painted red, replaced the wooden building; the sources consulted give neither the date of the replacement nor the name of its designer. The 23.7-hectare garden is protected as a natural area of federal importance.

The orangery, of about 1,000 m², is linked to the garden's main building, which houses the ticket office, the cloakroom and a shop selling young plants. The glasshouse is distinguished by its red-painted frame, which carries, among other things, the glass panels of the roof.

Inside, two paths run the full length of the house and meet at the far end, giving a complete loop through the beds. A small pool holds tropical water lilies, and near the exit there are an aquarium with large fish, a second pool with statues and a parrot cage. The most vigorous banana plant has more than once broken those roof panels.

The display house is backed by two working greenhouses, one fitted with a misting system and the other used for propagation and plant production.

The orangery collection numbers 612 species, forms and cultivars of tropical and subtropical plants. Visitors find citrus such as lemons and mandarins, feijoas, araucarias, azaleas, tender palms and several banana plants. The most spectacular, labelled the banana of the sages, must be cut back regularly to keep it from breaking the roof, which prevents it from bearing fruit.

The house also shows eucalyptus, jasmine, acacias, camphor laurel, cypresses, agaves and a display of cacti, as well as tropical water lilies in a small pool. In winter, the Bashkortostan tourist board speaks of an atmosphere of "subtropical splendour" inside.

The garden lies on Mendeleyev Street in south-eastern Ufa, at the Botanichesky Sad stop opposite the VDNKh exhibition building, and borders the forest park named after the Foresters of Bashkiria. Tickets are sold in the main building, and group tours of the orangery take about ten people at a time.

The orangery suits a winter visit, while the warmer months allow it to be combined with the outdoor collections: about 80 lilacs, peonies, irises, dahlias, clematis and roses, along with rare conifers such as hemlock, microbiota and ginkgo.