In the early Antiquity, this area, which is geographically connected to the course of Bregalnica River or antic Astibos, was part of Paeonia, colonized by the Paeonian tribe known as the Derrones.
Polybius (23.10.4) mentions that Emathia was earliest called Paeonia and Strabo (frg 7.38) that Paeonia was extended to Pieria and Pelagonia.
However, a passage in Athenaeus suggests that the Mysian language was akin to the barely attested Paeonian language of Paeonia, north of Macedon.
Paeonia | Paeonia (plant) | Paeonia mascula | Paeonia brownii |
Paeonia anomala has an immense range of wild habitat, stretching from the Ural Mountains of Russia to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia, then to the Mongolian Gobi Desert and the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan.
The garden was established in 1967, and now cultivates about 1,500 species of useful plants, including collections of Cactaceae and other succulents (such as Agave, Euphorbia, Kalanchoe, Stapelia, Sansevieria), Iris, Lilium, Paeonia, Rosa, Syringa, as well as flora of Asia and the Far East, Kazakhstan, Europe, the Americas, and medicinal plants and conifers such as Podocarpus.