Russia’s first botanical garden, the pharmaceutical garden, was established in the Kremlin under the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1581. Plants from overseas were collected and cultivated here in order to prepare medicines. Nowadays botanical gardens are primarily research centres, thanks to which a variety of plants have been preserved on the planet. The main botanical garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences is national property of Russia and is the largest botanical garden in Europe by area with its contents including 18,000 plants.