Qualla: Arboretum Oleksandriya

Arboretum Oleksandriya: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiyanka, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park is called Alexandria, but not for the Egyptian city of libraries and lighthouses. It was named for a woman, Countess Alexandra Branicka, who received this stretch of land along the Ros River as a gift from her husband in 1784 and set about turning it into one of the great romantic landscapes of Eastern Europe. More than two centuries later, her Alexandria survives as Arboretum Oleksandriya, the second-largest park in all of Ukraine, a place where classical colonnades and a bright golden footbridge appear among the trees like memories of a vanished aristocratic world.

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Image: Kiyanka | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arboretum Oleksandriya: A Reward and Its Shadow

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uk-Kamelot, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park's origins lie in a hard chapter of Ukrainian history. In December 1774, the Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski granted the Bila Tserkva estate to the Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, a reward for his role in crushing the Koliivshchyna, a violent Ukrainian uprisi...

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Image: Uk-Kamelot | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arboretum Oleksandriya: Designed Like a Dream

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maxim Gavrilyuk, CC BY-SA 4.0. The master plan came from a French architect known as Muffo, and a succession of gardeners and designers, with names like Botani, Stange, and Witt, brought it to life over the following decades. What they created was a landscape in the fashionable romantic style, its architecture...

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Image: Maxim Gavrilyuk | CC BY-SA 4.0

Arboretum Oleksandriya: The Company It Kept

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Бабенко Наталія, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a park in provincial Ukraine, Alexandria drew a remarkable roll of visitors. In the middle of the nineteenth century its paths were walked by the poets Gavrila Derzhavin and Alexander Pushkin, and by Taras Shevchenko, the towering figure of Ukrainian literature. It welcomed D...

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Image: Бабенко Наталія | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arboretum Oleksandriya: A Living Collection

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pedro J Pacheco, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today Alexandria is far more than a relic of noble leisure. It serves as the state arboretum of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and is recognized as a monument of landscape art. Set in a moderate continental climate with a growing season of some 170 to 180 days, the p...

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Image: Pedro J Pacheco | CC BY-SA 3.0