The A.V. Fomin Botanical Garden is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Ukraine, located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. In 1839 the Kiev Taras Shevchenko University opened its own botanical garden. The botanical garden is 22.5 hectares (0.225 km²), with 8,000 plant species, including 143 recorded in the Ukraine's Red Book of Rare Species. The Garden is famous for its exotic plants: it has the biggest collection of succulents among the countries of the former Soviet Union.