Nikita Things to Do

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Westwards to the Seaside Park, nearer to Yalta, another park is situated on Cape Ay-Todor. Aboriginal species - downy oak, tall juniper - grow together with relic coniferous exotic plants: numerous species of pine-tree from different countries of the world, metasequoia with gentle, falling for the winter, pine-needles.

Here one can also admire the plantings of Pitzund pine-tree, natural plantations of which on the Southern Coast, were preserved only at Cape Aya in the west and in Novy Svet in the east. An old grove of Wellingtonia, plantings of cypress, gutta-percha-tree and other exotic plants astonish visitors.

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The Seaside Park is the best protected by neighboring mountain crests. The climate is milder here and that is why the most heat-loving evergreens are presented in this part of the garden: various palm-trees, cedar and osmantuses, mastic pistachio-tree, numerous brightly blooming subtropical shrubs. In the Seaside Park there are the most heat-loving trees and shrubs: myrtle, pheyhoa, orchidaceous tree, hamerops (palmetto).

On the both sides of the Seaside Park two more interesting objects of Nikitsky garden are situated. Eastwards - there is reserve "Cape Martyan", where rare trees, shrubs and grasses grow in virgin conditions - 500 species - and this wealth is situated on 120 hectares of the dryland reserve. This reserve is the natural laboratory for the scientists, working in the garden that is why it is closed for mass excursions.

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In the Lower Park of the garden grows Californian oak (it cannot be met anywhere else in Russia and Ukraine). In Nikitsky garden there are also Allepian pine-tree, Numidian (Algerian) silver-tree, grass-leaved Californian oak and Arizonian cypress, Virginian juniper and the only specimen of "iron tree" (Persian parottiya) in Nikitsky garden. The tree reaches the height of 6 metres, has the crown of broad-oval leaves, which take pink-orange coloration in autumn.

The Lower Park is the oldest part of the garden. It was founded in the first half of the 19th century. Here, the olive-tree grove, laid more than 160 years ago, attracts visitors' attention. There are other heat-loving plants: fig-tree, medlar, and persimmon. The old trees of microcarpous (small-fruited) strawberry-tree (red strawberry-tree), entered in the International Red book, are the most interesting ones.