Occupying 20 acres, the Gardens have been created in 1765 by Normal Robert Melville, governor of the British Caribbean islands, as a plant breeding centre and ‘to provide medicinal vegetation for the army and enhance the life and economic system of the colony’. The Botanical Garden of Vilnius University will not be only the biggest backyard in Lithuania (complete area is 199 ha) but additionally the richest one in its plant collections: plants of 9 000 names belonging to 886 genera could be discovered there, and the very best and most impressive collections are these of rhododendrons, lilacs, lianas, peonies, … Read the rest