[citation needed] It consists of outdoor and indoor collections situated on Aptekarsky Island in Saint Petersburg and belongs to the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Regel had a particular fascination with the genus Allium, overseeing collections of these plants in the Russian Far East and writing about them in two monographs.

[3] Around 1900, Boris Fedtschenko became head botanist and he organised investigations of various Russian regions including Siberia, Caucusus, Middle Asia and Asiatic Russia.

The night blossom of cactus Selenicereus grandiflorus, cultivated there since 1857, is a celebrated event announced in mass media and open to the public in the 16th greenhouse in June-July.

The indoor collections suffered significant losses during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941-1944; out of 6367 species only 861 survived.

The building of the botanical museum faces the Northern Yard in place of the non-existent greenhouse No.

It is elevated only 1.5-3 m above sea-level and has thus regularly suffered from catastrophic floods characteristic of Saint Petersburg.