Natural environment

For the construction of the park, the valley of the Kamianka river was chosen, which is characterized by unique granite outcrops of the Ukrainian Crystalline Massif (Ukrainian Shield). The preconditions that determined the choice of this area were the natural beauty of the landscape, the presence of granite as a building material and the presence of water. Th. Themery writes: “The entire valley of “Sofiyivka” is located as if in a quarry of natural rocks. The granite from which these rocks are composed forms huge depositions of such a mass that it protrudes to the surface of the hills, and its cyclopean blocks are heaped on top of each other”. Having successfully used the natural relief of the area, the chief architect of the park, Ludwik Metzel, applied his experience as a military engineer to create landscape areas.

The territory of the National Dendrological Park "Sofiyivka" NAS of Ukraine has a complex relief. The park is located on a mesogmatic granite batholith. The granite occurs at a depth of 20-40 m or more, but in gullies and riverbeds it sometimes comes to the surface, forming picturesque rocks. The main soil-forming materials are loess and modern alluvial-deluvial sediments of the bottoms of gullies and valleys, and in some places - granite.

The Kamianka valley

The territory of the park occupies the valley of the Kamianka river, which crosses the park in the south-west direction, as well as the valley and the inter-gully plateau of the Greek gully and the Menagerie gully, adjacent to the Kamianka valley on the right side. During the construction of the park, the riverbed of the Kamianka was blocked with dams and a cascade of four ponds with a total area of about 40 hectares was created, which became a new element of the relief and greatly influenced the microclimate and the soil formation processes.

The soils in the park are diverse and are represented by regraded chernozems (black soils), dark gray podzolized forest soils, dark gray slightly washed-off forest soils, meadow-marshy soils, and soils of the initial stage of formation.

The geographical, climatic and orographic conditions of the park, which is located, from a botanical point of view, in the zone of the Right-Bank part of the Western Forest-Steppe of the Middle Dnieper region of the flora of Eastern Europe, are favorable for the successful growth of numerous plant species of forest, meadow, steppe, coastal, swamp and aquatic habitats. The analysis of the botanical composition of the park's plants and soil features showed that the park was founded on the site of a former forest, which the local residents cut down long before the construction began.