An environmental activist, Mikhail Glustchenko, decided to create a Neskuchny (not-boring) forest in VSU Botanical Garden. Plants associated with a particular region will be grown to form a map of Russia. Mikhail Glustchenko came up with the idea a year ago.
“Each region is associated with a particular plant. For example, the Voronezh Region is linked to carvel pines: our city is the birthplace of the Russian fleet. The Lipetsk Region is associated with lindens, the Belgorod Region is about oaks, and the Krasnodar Territory is about boxfood woods. This kind of principle is used to make a map,” said Mikhail. “It happens that people from various regions write to me and offer to bring plants.”
About 100 plants will be planted in the Neskuchny forest. By now, the Botanical Garden have received nursery plants from Adygea, Karelia, Arkhangelsk, Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Irkutsk, Murmansk, and other parts of Russia. However, how will all these plants get along with each other?
“For the chalky pines we have brought a cart of chalk, for some other trees we use rocks. Researchers with PhD degrees are involved in the project, they won’t let us make a blunder,” said Mikhail.
“A part of the project involves introduction of plants and this is the key area of activities at the Botanical Garden. The huge experience of the cultivation of plants from other regions and methods of phytocoenotic and climatic analogues allow creating such biogeographical exhibitions. There won’t be any climate deviations. After all, the plants we chose are not from the tropics and subtropics but from a temperate zone. They have a very good capacity to adapt: they can easily adapt to any conditions. The results of the long-term introduction in the Soviet period also prove resilience of most of the species in the Neskuchny forest project.
However, the following should be taken into consideration: normally, a large number of plants of the same species are planted because one or two specimens are too vulnerable against a number of environmental factors. The larger the sampling, the higher is the survival percentage. We use another approach. We focus on the best care and the automatic watering system”, said Lilia Lepeshkina, the leading biologist at the Botanical Garden and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences.
The organisers will install plaques with the history of each nursery plant.
“This project is aimed at enhancing the diversity of plants, which will contribute to making the garden more appealing to the visitors. It will help develop further research dedicated to introduction”, said Andrey Voronin, Director of the Botanical Garden of VSU.
It will take a while before the visitors will be able to see the Neskuchny forest cut and dried. According to the organisers, still a lot of work needs to be done.
