Orekhovno Manor Park is open to visitors from May 1 to October 31

The Pskov region

Welcome

OREKHOVNO

Orekhovno Estate is the first and only European garden in Russia which, despite its status of private property, is open for public. Orekhovno Estate is located in the village of Orekhovno, the Pskov region. It belongs to Alexander Grivko, a landscape architect, the designer of numerous private and public gardens in Russia and Europe.

Aleksander spent his childhood here. An interest in nature and plants came from his mother, who was in love with her native Pskov landscapes.

Many years later, the well-known landscape architect returned to the banks of the Orekhovnitsa river to set up a garden in loving memory of his early deceased mother.

HOUSE AND GARDEN

Using his experience and acquired knowledge, Alexander and his partner Mark Dumas have turned five hectares of abandoned veg patches, sliding down to the mud-creek, into a blooming garden.

The manor house - a small castle in the Norman style is the central point of the garden

On one side the castle is surrounded by an Italian garden, where on the lawn planted with lilies of the valley, crocuses and snowdrops, a stone Amur bends a bow. On the other side there is an English landscape park with all its traditional features: untailored lines, unclipped lindens and winding paths. The so-called Russian Manor garden is set up on the opposite bank of the river. Trimmed bushes intertwine with untrimmed ones, bright colors fade and the visitor faces a gothic cathedral high on the hill: this is a fragment of an ancient facade of a French church.

The Orekhovno Estate park is an encyclopedia of garden styles: English landscape, Regular Italian and French. Here you may come across some elements inherent in many specimen of European garden art. In essence, Orekhovno is the homage to the historic estate culture.

PLANTS

Plants in the park were carefully selected with due regard for the climate of the given latitudes. Evergreen yew and boxwood were replaced by thuja occidentalis. An alley of ten-meter species of this rare type of trees, culminating in a classic balustrade, reproduces a French landscape with cypresses. In Orekhovno one may also find a miniature fragment of an Italian Renaissance garden: with a mirror regular park, patterned plantings, bosquets, ornamental sculptures.

The Pskov Region

The Pskov Region is an ideal place for both an inquisitive traveler and an idle hedonist. The nature has generously given it picturesque terrains, majestic hills, transparent lakes, mixed forests and even taiga.

Pskov, the principal city of the region, has a lot of places of interest. A powerful stonework of the walls and towers of the Pskov Kremlin brings back a lot of ancient stories. The picture gallery of Pskov, with its works of famous Russian artists, is obviously worth an unhurried and thoughtful visit.

The Pskov region is inextricably linked with one of the greatest Russian poets, Alexander Pushkin. There is Pushkin museum-preserve that includes Mikhailovskoye (his mother’s ancestral home) where he was exiled to in 1824-1826, Petrovskoye (an ancestral estate of the Gannibals, his forefathers) and Svyatogorsky monastery, the last earthly refuge of the poet.

You can get to Orekhovno by

E95 highway from St-Petersburg to Belarus, having crossed the M9 highway turn right and follow the the road marker “Orekhovno 2,7 km”.

E95 highway from Belarus to St-Petersburg, turn left on the road marker “Orekhovno 2,7 km”.

Drive from Pskov (you can get to Pskov by train from Moscow or St-Petersburg)