MILITARY CHRONICLES OF THE GARDENS OF THE RUSSIAN MUSEUM

On this day the Great Patriotic War began, which brought a lot of grief and suffering to the peoples living on the territory of the USSR.

Despite the fact that June 22, 1941 was Sunday, in the Summer Garden there was work on planting summers on flower beds arranged next to the Swan groove. Recreation of flower beds of the grand stall was planned by the project of restoration of the Summer Garden, developed by Tatyana Borisovna Dubyago in 1940. Work in the garden was supervised by a senior gardener Peter Kondratievich Lobanov. This is how Peter Kondratievich recalls this. “Having finished planting flowers in the stalls on the shore of the Swan groove, I and other garden workers, delighted at the successful work, went to the gatehouse for lunch. Passing the Rossi pavilion, we heard from the radio receiver located on the pavilion building, alarming beeps and a message about what Comrade Molotov will say now. We stopped and soon heard Comrade Molotov’s message about the beginning of the war with Germany. And we went on to the gatehouse, already clouded by the thought of the horrors of war. “

Photos of this flower garden have not been preserved. But here’s how the gardener of the Summer Garden described it touchingly: “in the center of the main drawing, a blooming dark purple heliotrope was planted, and bordered with gray-greenish cineraria maritima and santolin. A blue lobelia was planted along the paths of the stalls along the tracks with a ribbon bordering it with a gray “All this created a modest and at the same time amazingly elegant and pleasant look.” 55,000 flower seedlings were planted on the stalls. Unfortunately, many Leningraders did not have time to admire this flower garden, although Peter Kondratievich even spoke about it on Leningrad radio.

In July 1941, the MOPR garden (as the Mikhailovsky Garden was then called) was added to the Summer Garden, and Lobanov added more worries. The volume of work is increasing, and the number of employees is decreasing. At the same time, the peaceful life of the gardens finally ends. They close for visitors, and they begin to dig shelter holes from bombs and shells. To the best of his abilities and capabilities, Pyotr Kondratievich ensured that the cracks did not dig close to the trees and did not severely damage their root system. Thanks to his efforts, not a single tree died from this in the gardens; in other gardens, squares and boulevards of Leningrad in the summer of 1942, many trees died for this reason. As indicated in the report on the completed garden work to them. MOPR: “As soon as the cracks are ready, those are sown with seeds of lawn grass, and processed by the workers of the Summer Garden. In total, the surface of the cracks is seeded and decorated with an area of ​​about 1 ha.”

In addition to works for the defense of the city, planned works were also carried out: pruning shrubs, garbage collection, protecting gardens, weeding flower beds and many other works. Gardeners performed their professional duty to preserve the gardens that adorn Leningrad. None of them knew what trials they still had to overcome.

DEDICATED TO THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT VICTORY

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