Russian Gardens Historical Evolution, Practices And Its Influence

Russia is a country full of history and culture. Thousands years of civilization brought it an unique way of understanding and representation of the art. The gardens in Russia has also been affected by many factors such as region, religion and Europeanization. After hundreds years of development, it shows the characters of combination and multi-nations. From 11th to 17th century, the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox had huge impact on Russian monastery and private gardens. Peter I the Great (1682-1725) brought in the famous Le Notre's style of design design from the Europe to build large-scale regular gardens. While as Catherine II (1762-1796)'s admiration of British natural style, the gardens in Russia have been localized. In modern times, Russia suffered many wars. Cities, buildings, and gardens have been given the meaning of politics and power in Soviet Union (1917-1991). Apart from the restoration of some classic gardens, many kinds of Soviet style gardens such as Culture and Leisure garden, Victory garden, Commemoration gardens for leaders, soldiers, or general purposes appeared during that time.The modernization process of China has been greatly affected by Russia, as many cities in China still retain the similar layout and building style as in Russia. Systematic study of the evolution of Russian city landscape architecture can help understanding the Chinese landscape architecture. Now, similar to China, Russia is also under fast development. Its landscape design theory and experiences thus continuously have the paramount meanings to China.Along the time line, we discussed the characteristics of Russian gardens in this thesis. It includes three parts. In the first part, the origin and evolution of Russian garden art are introduced, together with the city landscape, architecture style, and sculpture technique. The national and advanced building skills are abstracted in part two, by an analysis of Russian natural gardens, commemoration gardens, leisure gardens, and the city gardening system, to understand their behind reasons and meanings. In the last part, the Russian impact on China's city landscape and garden design and its lessons and experiences are concluded.