Laidi Garden

Laidi and Igor Zalekeshin’s garden in Mustvee attracts gardening enthusiasts from outside Estonia as well. Lake Peipus with its width is a true sight in itself, but Laidi’s Garden is a great experience for those looking for ideas to landscape their garden.

Visitors are charmed by the quarrystones and conifers, more than a hundred in total in the garden. Most of them, more than 50 varieties, are arborvitae. Both the host and the hostess love quarrystones, so this love has resulted in many exciting garden design elements – stone baskets, pathways, garden posts. Garden patches are mostly covered by stones. Old items are on display in the garden house; a visitor enjoying a walk is enchanted by the small bridges, waterholes, a swing set and a windmill, most of them made by the family. The walls of the house are decorated by paintings of the family’s favourites – quarrystones, conifers and cats. There are more than 20 cat statues in the garden.

The ornamental garden attracts guests both in the spring and summer

The family became more into ornamental gardening about a dozen years ago when they put an end to cucumber farming, so the back garden has been established in the place of the large greenhouse. The total area of the front and back garden is 1,480 square metres.

Garden enthusiasts can enjoy:

• colourful tulip varieties,
• rhododendrons,
• luscious peonies,
• species-rich perennial beds.

Both the family’s own children and other small visitors can enjoy the playground in the garden.

At the summer food festival, the Peipsi Food Street Festival 175 km, the pop-up restaurant of the farmers market Kääpa OTT opened its doors in Laidi’s Garden. 1,300 people visited the garden in two days, so the family felt encouraged to have the garden open for visitors in the future as well.