In the lavish greenhouses of Kyiv’s botanical garden, workers are scrambling to save a decades-old collection of tropical plants after months of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid led to blackouts that threatened the garden’s heating supply, Reuters reported.

“These collections cannot be restored. This is not a greenhouse of cucumbers and tomatoes… The loss of this collection would be a great national loss for Ukraine,” said Lyudmila Buyun, responsible for tropical and subtropical plants.

“You can’t tell plants… ‘please wait because it’s minus 15 degrees (Celsius) today.’ It’s impossible,” she said, pointing to signs of cold damage on some plants.

The plants would suffer greatly if the temperature in the greenhouse dropped below 15 degrees Celsius, she added.

Finding ways to maintain a tropical climate in frozen Kyiv with frequent power outages is very difficult, and gardeners now preemptively heat greenhouses with firewood, even though the smoke poses a danger to plants.

Usually, the garden was heated with firewood in electric stoves. However, due to frequent power outages, the heating cycle is disrupted, and it takes hours to restart the furnaces, boiler plant operator Yuriy Nai said.

Now the administration of the garden has connected to the central heating system of Kyiv to have a backup system, but fears further rocket attacks on the power grid.

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