Fomin Botanical Garden. Kyiv’s oldest garden: a 30-meter climatron, a 200-year-old palm and over 9,000 plant species

Flowers by the glass climatron in the Fomin Botanical Garden
Cacti in a greenhouse of the Fomin Botanical Garden
A spring path lined with blossoming trees in the Fomin Botanical Garden
An autumn corner of the Fomin Botanical Garden with benches
Pink rhododendrons by a greenhouse in the Fomin Botanical Garden
Flowers by the glass climatron in the Fomin Botanical GardenCacti in a greenhouse of the Fomin Botanical GardenA spring path lined with blossoming trees in the Fomin Botanical GardenAn autumn corner of the Fomin Botanical Garden with benchesPink rhododendrons by a greenhouse in the Fomin Botanical Garden

Kyiv’s oldest botanical garden, founded in 1839 to a design by architect Vincenzo Beretti. The park section is open to visit freely, while the scientific section with the greenhouses can only be visited with a guide.

Why visit

  • Kyiv’s oldest botanical garden: the first plantings were made in 1839 to a design by architect Beretti
  • A 30-meter climatron – the tallest greenhouse of its kind in Europe at the time it was built
  • A Livistona palm over 200 years old: the oldest and tallest in Ukraine, blooming in February
  • More than nine thousand plant species – from Arctic to tropical; two collections hold National Heritage status
  • This is where Sergei Navashin discovered double fertilization in plants, and those trees still grow in the garden
  • A magnolia garden, rhododendrons and a rock garden right in the city center, next to Universytet metro station

Good to know

Two parts of the garden – different rules
The park section is open to visit freely, and entry is free. The scientific section with the greenhouses is paid and accessible only with a guide: entering on your own is not allowed.
Entrance to the scientific section
The entrance to the scientific section is at 1 Symona Petliury St, through the metal gates. The guide meets visitors at the gates. Nearest metro station: Universytet. The plant sales point has a separate entrance at the corner of Hetmana Pavla Skoropadskoho and Nazarivska Streets.
Tours daily except Monday
Tours without booking start at 11:00, 12:00 and 14:00. Groups of 10 to 20 people can book tours at 10:00 and 15:00. Break from 13:00 to 14:00. Closed on Mondays.
Ticket – UAH 150, child – UAH 75
A tour of the scientific section costs UAH 150 for adults and UAH 75 for children under 14. Children under six go free. For a party of one to five adults there is a fixed price of UAH 600, split among everyone present.
Who gets in free
Free for children under six and for combat veterans on presentation of the relevant document. Students and staff of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv can take the tours free of charge by prior arrangement with the administration.
Tour topics
A general tour of the greenhouse complex – tropical, subtropical, relict and rare plants (groups of up to 20 people). On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:00 there is a separate tour of the succulent greenhouses (groups of up to 10 people). There is also an outdoor tour of the woody plant collections – call to check the time.
Commercial photo and video shoots – separately
Photography for 60 minutes costs UAH 1,500, filming costs UAH 3,000. This is a separate service, not included in the tour price.
During an air-raid alert
Visiting the grounds during an air-raid alert is not allowed.
When to come for the blossoms
The Livistona palm in the climatron blooms in the second half of winter, most often in early February, for about three weeks. The magnolias and rhododendrons in the park section bloom in spring. In summer 2026, for Kyiv Day, the garden opened part of the scientific section for free walks for the first time, so keep an eye on its Instagram announcements.
Terrain and footwear
The garden spreads over 22.5 hectares with ravines and steep slopes and a height difference of almost 40 meters. Wear comfortable shoes; with a stroller, some routes will be difficult.

The main reason people buy a ticket here is the greenhouse complex in the garden’s scientific section. It centers on a 30-meter climatron, which at the time it was built was the tallest greenhouse of its kind in Europe: three old 16-meter greenhouses were taken down and a single tall one went up in their place. Next to it are an 18-meter domed greenhouse, a complex of aquatic plant greenhouses and separate greenhouses for succulents. Inside the climatron grows the garden’s main star – an Australian Livistona palm, the oldest and tallest in Ukraine. It is more than two hundred years old and about thirty meters tall, and it was brought here back in 1834 from Kremenets. The palm blooms in the second half of winter, usually for about three weeks, and each flowering makes Kyiv news. In 2021, a bronze miniature sculpture in its honor was installed on the facade of the building opposite the garden – Kyiv’s first “monument” to a plant. In total, the garden holds more than nine thousand species, forms and varieties of plants – from Arctic to tropical and desert ones. Two collections have the official status of National Heritage of Ukraine: tropical and subtropical greenhouse plants (since 2015) and outdoor woody plants (since 2021). The arboretum has 2234 taxa, including more than two hundred rare species, almost 150 of which are on the global Red List. The park section is free to enter and covers 22.5 hectares of very uneven terrain: the garden is cut by ravines and slopes, with a height difference of almost 40 meters. Here you will find the Magnolia Garden, collections of rhododendrons, lilacs, wild roses, cotoneaster, spiraea, conifers and spore plants, a rock garden, a formal fruit garden and a parterre. In spring, this is where people come to see the magnolias bloom. The park section also has several separate sights: a monument to the Korean poet Kim Sowol, the sculptural group “Gate of the Soul – a Dialogue between Taras Shevchenko and Du Fu” in the shape of two open books, the “Poetic Glade”, the sculpture “Invasion” and the “Dialogue” gazebo, made from recycled plastic bottle caps and equipped with a solar panel and Wi-Fi. The garden’s history rests on the people who ran it. The first plantings were made by Rudolph Trautvetter on May 22, 1839 – this day is considered the founding date. The core of the collection came from plants moved from the closed Kremenets Lyceum. From 1894 to 1914 the garden was headed by Sergei Navashin, who discovered double fertilization in plants right here – a world-class discovery that made it into every botany textbook; the trees from which he and his students took their material still grow in the garden. From 1914 until his death in 1935, the garden was led by Academician Oleksandr Fomin, whose name it has borne since that same year, 1935. In 1960 the garden was declared a landmark of landscape architecture, and in 1983 a protected site. Another separate sight is the Museum of the History of the Botanical Garden, with about ten thousand items in its collection. The grounds also have a sales point for plants grown in the garden: conifers and deciduous trees, ornamental shrubs, perennials and tropical plants – aloe, ficus, haworthia.