🌳 Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)

Щёлковское ш., вл. 1

A garden with hundreds of lilac bushes, many varieties bred by Leonid Kolesnikov, including "Beauty of Moscow".

In 1954, on Leonid Kolesnikov's initiative, a lilac nursery was created here, and it became a garden in 1975; the neighboring boulevard was named Sirenevy (Lilac) in 1960.
Kolesnikov was a self-taught breeder and a driver by profession; in 1952 he received a Stalin Prize for new lilac varieties.
He bred about 300 varieties, of which about 50 survive.
Kolesnikov selected "Beauty of Moscow" in 1947 from seedlings of a cross between the Belle de Nancy variety and his own variety "I. V. Michurin".
"Dzhambul" grows here — the world's first lilac with a white edge along the petals.
Kolesnikov's lilacs grow in the grounds of Buckingham Palace (the "Galina Ulanova" variety), but the story of one at the Capitol is a myth.
The popular story that Kolesnikov was Marshal Zhukov's driver is not confirmed either.