Main Botanical Garden

Give it an hour and a half. That is long enough to walk the collections properly and short enough that it stays a pleasure, and it is the rare thing in Almaty that is beautiful without requiring a car, a gorge or a whole day.

It helps to know what this place is, because the word garden undersells it. It was laid out in 1932 and covers 103.6 hectares, and it is not run as a park: it is a protected natural territory belonging to the Institute of Botany, with living collections of Kazakh and world flora arranged by where the plants come from. What you are walking through is a scientific collection that happens to be open to the public, which is why the trees are worth looking at individually rather than as scenery.

It opens daily from 09:00 to 20:00. Three gates — north and west on Timiryazev, south on Al-Farabi — and the south gate is the useful one if you are already up that end of town.

Two things to check before you set out. The first Monday of every month is a cleaning day and the garden is shut, and the ticket desk closes for half an hour at three. Neither is a long walk to discover for yourself, but both have ruined an afternoon for somebody.

They do not publish a proper price list online. The one number their site gives is for paying by text message — 932.14 ₸ for an adult — so treat that as the order of magnitude and expect the desk to be in the same territory. Tours, including individual ones, are arranged in advance by phone.

I was there in the autumn, which I would recommend: this is a collection of trees, and October is when a collection of trees does its best work.