Baltic Garden showcases decorative plant varieties from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia

A unique exhibition showcasing decorative plant varieties from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—the only one of its kind in the Baltic region—has opened.

On the last Friday of summer, Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) Botanical Garden in Kaunas hosted scientists, breeders, and collectors from the three Baltic states for the inauguration of the Baltic Garden. This distinctive botanical collection features only decorative plants bred in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Dr. Arūnas Balsevičius, head of the VMU Botanical Garden’s Exhibition and Collection Department and the mastermind behind this initiative, highlighted at the event that the collection aims to gather and preserve plant varieties bred in the Baltic region. Many of these varieties, created by amateur breeders, are non-commercial and rare.

Lithuanian cultivars of peonies have been grown in the Vytautas Magnus University Botanical Garden for a long time. As early as 1947, Dr. Ona Skeivienė bred and officially registered cultivars such as ‘Freda’, ‘Garbė Motinai’, ‘Maironis’, ‘Professor K. Grybauskas’, ‘Skeivienės Vėlyvasis’, and ‘Virgilijus’, which are known not only in Lithuania but also worldwide and which are still grown today. Dr. O. Skeiveinė bred as many as 19 new cultivars of peonies. Lithuanian peonies can be found in the peony exposition on the island. We have had a number of Latvian and Estonian cultivars of roses in the Rosarium, given as a gift by Tallinn Botanic Garden and the National Botanical Garden of Latvia. The current collections have inspired the creation of a new exposition featuring ornamental plants of the Baltic States.

Thus, in 2020, we started collecting cultivars of ornamental perennials bred by Lithuanian amateur breeders, with the aim of preserving them and creating a collection of Lithuanian ornamental plants. This led to the idea of the creation of the Baltic Garden, which was eagerly joined by other botanical gardens of the Baltic States: VU Šiauliai Academy Botanical Garden, Vilnius University Botanical Garden, National Botanical Garden of Latvia, University of Latvia Botanical Garden, Tallinn Botanic Garden, and the University of Tartu Botanical Garden. Many Estonian cultivars were given as a gift to the Baltic Garden by Marika Vartla, and the Lithuanian flower breeders such as Algirdas Gražys, Edvinas Misiukevičius, Genovaitė Pociulienė, Danutė Simonaitienė, Edmundas Kondratas, Kazimieras Rimkus, Kęstutis Vyšniauskas, and Viktorija Vyšniauskienė contributed their own cultivars of plants to the Baltic Garden. Cultivars developed by the staff of VMU Botanical Garden are also grown here.