As inspiration for this work and subsequent publication we used drawings and prints from the diary of an amateur rose-grower from Kharkiv. He, together with his assistant Hamlet, completed the reconstruction of the rosarium of Donetsk during the period between 2008 and 2010. The rosarium is well known among specialist professional circles as Donrosa.

Local legend has it that Donrosa had been proposed, or even perhaps existed as a design from the late nineteen hundreds, created by landscape gardeners from Great Britain, commissioned by local rose enthusiasts and collectors as a template for the future Great-Eastern Botanical Garden. The planning and planting of the rosarium took into consideration both the idiosyncrasies of the local climate and conditions as well as psyche of the region’s rose-growers.

The influence of English garden design can be sensed from the apparent use of ideas based on the first book of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”. The influence of Renaissance Florence on the Victorian intelligentsia of the latter half of the nineteenth century lends weight to this hypothesis.