The „Al. Buia” Botanical garden, under the management of the Craiova University, was founded at the initiative and under the guidance of prof.dr. univ. Alexandru Buia in 1952, is a scientific, teaching and educational institution.
He understood that there couldn’t be a agronomic or horticultural superior education institute without a university botanical garden. The garden expands on a surface of approximately 12.8 ha. The botanical garden is organized in the following sectors:
The decorating sector is plain, it starts from the visitors’ entry on Iancu Jianu str., containing 145 taxonomies.
The Flower provinces of Romania, with 120 taxons, is placed on the north, north-east and east sides of the Botanial Garden. To create condiditions closest to the ecological requirements of the species from different fitogeographical regions of Romania, micro and macro reliefs with heights between 1.5 m and 30 m to complement the lakes’ water glow were arranged, through large land buildups.
The plant systematic sector is placed in the central part of the Botanical Garden. It also includes the lake that hosts, aside from the aquatic plants, different species of birds. It is organized after the entire vegetal reign theoretical classification system, elaborated by Al. Borza in 1925 and the plants are categorized by scientific criteria, showing the passing from inferior to superior (evolution) and the descent of some categories from others (philogeny).
The plant systematic sector contains a number of 1000 taxons, that are only represented by cormophytes: pteridophyte, gymnospermes and angiosperms.
The Flower provinces sector of the world contains 1200 taxons and it is placed in the south west part of the garden. It operates with the following provinces: Mediteranean, Caucasian, Central Asian, South East Asian And North American.
The cultivate plants’ sector is in the North West side of the botanical garden and in it there are 225 taxons. They are divided into six sections: agrophytotechnics, vegetable growing, trees, bushes and medicinal plans, vineyard and fruit trees.
Greenhouses sector is placed near the administrative residence and it is structured in four compartiments: greenhouse lane, juicy plants greenhouse, tropical and subtropical plants greenhouse and the multiplying greenhouse. In this sector there are 630 taxons.
The seed bed – rosarium sector is placed in the West and South West of the garden. In the seed bed growing biological material is multiplied and it is used in the garden sectors to replace damaged exhibits.
The museum is placed in the hallway of the administrative building and it contains seeds, fruit, planches, graphics, diplomas samples catalogue collections edited by the Botanical garden from the foundation to the present day.
The herbarium represents a very important component in avery botanical garden. It has started with aproximately 10 000 edited pages of the Flora Romaniae Exsiccata (F.R.E.), that were bought by the Craiova University from the Borza family. To it they added prof. Al Buia’s herbarium, containing 20000 pages with plants collected from all provinces of Romania and mostly identified by him.
