Vul. Cheremshyny, 44 – botanical garden (former Tsetnerivka park)

The first projects of founding a botanical garden in Lviv stipulated that it should be created on the basis of a garden plot belonging to one of the abolished suburban monasteries. Thus, in the late 18^th century it was planned that the former missionaries’ monastery garden, situated in Zhovkivske suburb, would be used for this purpose. Another botanical garden existed for a short time on the grounds of the Dominican nuns’ convent in the neighbourhood of Kopernika street. Yet another botanical garden was founded by professor Ernst Wittmann in 1832 near the town shooting gallery on Kurkowa (now Lysenka) street. Finally, in 1852 professor Hiacynt Łobarzewski founded a botanical garden of the Lviv University on the place of an old garden plot belonging to the former Trinitarian monastery and located on present-day Kyryla i Mefodiya street 4 (Finkel, Starzyński, 1894, 325; Jaworski, 1911, 302-303). In 1911 the university purchased for its botanical garden an additional plot in the neighbourhood of the former Lychakivske suburb; it was the territory of the so-called Tsetnerivka, a historic Lviv park of the late 18^th - 1^st half of the 19^th centuries.

Tsetnerivka has its own glorious history. It was founded in the late 18^th century by Ignacy Cetner, a rich magnate and a former voivode of Belz, a lover of art and a collector  (Jaworski, 1911, 297-301). Cetner collected old books, coins, engravings, and minerals but above all he was fond of botany. He built his residence in the environs of Lviv, to the east of what is now the historic center, and founded his private park nearby, on the edge of the forest. Cetner was a caring amateur gardener who grew flowers and trees by himself working in his garden. As a historian wrote, “there were not only local but also outlandish trees there; they stood in nicely arranged groups, American pines with black beeches and ashes, acacias with maples, weeping birches with oaks… Cetner’s greenhouses were famous for their most valuable and rare kinds of flowers. In the park, there were summerhouses, benches, a small well hidden in the shadow of the trees; there were also swans swimming in the pond” (Крип’якевич, 1991, 97). According to another author, “it was nice here in the first years of the last [19th] century. A road twisted between the rocks; it was built of stone and lined with most diverse trees, with some rare botanical species among them. An enchanting pond and an estate, beautifully arranged inside, were fringed with well-attended lawns and flowerbeds. No trace of this can be seen today, and only the old trees are still talking about the wonderful past time” (Stankiewicz, 1928, 69). So Tsetnerivka went down in history as one of legendary parks famous in the Romantic period. In the mid-to-late 19^th century the Cetner’s park fell into decay, and in the early 20^th century its territory was purchased by the university.

The university’s botanical garden was organized at Tsetnerivka in 1911. According to Mieczysław Orłowicz, after the World War II its area was 14 ha (Orłowicz, 1925, 10, 240). From 1924 the garden was managed by professor Stanisław Kulczyński, the organizer of the plant morphology and systematics department at the Jan Kazimierz University. His principal purpose was to create a garden museum of Poland’s flora; seeds and living plants were brought there by numerous expeditions. The mixed and diverse topography of Tsetnerivka helped to recreate different kinds of flora: that of water bodies, marshes, woodlands, meadows, forest-steppe. In the interwar period the garden was enclosed with a fence; its central building was reconstructed (Богданова, Дідик, Максим’юк, 2008, 572).

During the World War II the botanical garden of the Lviv University suffered considerable losses as its hothouse plants perished while alpine and subalpine species were virtually lost. After the war was over, the recovery work started in the garden. Its area was increased to 104 ha due to the addition of some plots of the neighbouring locality of Pohulianka which had belonged to the Armenian episcopate and private owners. A site plan for the further development of the botanical garden was designed in the late 1950s; however, it has not been realized (Дідик, Максим’юк, Мих, 2008, 640). In the following decades the garden started to lose its territory; a major part of its area was separated and merged with the forest park of Pohulianka. A plot with rare steppe plants was lost in the 1970s; the ponds were neglected. The botanical garden area was reduced to 16.5 ha. A conservatory complex with a total area of 1250 sq. m. was constructed in the garden’s territory in the 1970s.

As of today, the structure of the botanical garden of the Lviv National Ivan Franko University consists of five scientific departments, those of dendrology, natural herbaceous flora, cultivated flora and landscape gardening, tropical and subtropical plants, as well as that of plant physiology and biochemistry. The collections, located on two plots (Kyryla i Mefodiya street 4 and Marka Cheremshyny street 44), represent the wealth of both Ukraine’s flora and plants from different parts of the world.