Fruit orchards add special charm to the Yasnaya Polyana estate. Its landscape ensemble has a history of more than two centuries. The Inventory of the Orchard, compiled by Leo Tolstoy’s mother, Countess Maria Tolstaya, in the early 19th century, tells us what the Yasnaya Polyana orchards were like at that time. The Inventorymentions 849 apple trees of 34 kinds. Fruit trees were also planted in the English Garden. There was a plants nursery at the estate, where young fruit and forest trees were grown. Leo Tolstoy increased the area occupied by the orchards from 25 to over 100 acres. Soon after he married, as his wife Sophia wrote, he “planted a large apple orchard, saying it was for Seryozha who had just been born at that time” (Seryozha – Sergey – was the first-born child in their family.) After that Tolstoy planted thousands of apple trees at Yasnaya Polyana, they all took root and made the central part of the estate much more picturesque. There was a great variety of apples in the orchards. Besides the kinds mentioned in the Inventory of the Orchard – Bely Naliv (Yellow Transparent), Arabian, Korobovka etc. - here appeared Antonovkas, Babushkino (Grandmother), Mirontchik, Anis, Rosmarin, Calville, Arkad, Greening – all in all more than 30 new varieties, mostly early ones. Cherry and plum trees were grown at Yasnaya Polyana, too, and there also were berry plantations and a little nursery near the thrashing barn and the greenhouse. But most of these fruits and berries were used only by the family, while the apple orchards were rented, and part of the crop was left at the estate. By the 1920s, not so many old trees remained in the orchards of the estate. The first restoration of the orchards took place when Alexandra Tolstaya was the museum director. In the 1930s the fruit orchards were documented. The Yasnaya Polyana orchards suffered greatly in the winter of 1939–40, when 80 % of the trees were destroyed by frost. In 1948 their restoration began. The orchard was gradually restored on all the area it occupied in Tolstoy’s lifetime, and the same kinds of apple trees were mainly used. Moreover, about one hundred apple trees that were planted in Tolstoy’s lifetime still grow here and bear fruit. In the Old Orchard the so called Garden House can also be found; in Tolstoy’s time it was used for storing apples. The orchards were one of Leo Tolstoy’s favorite places at Yasnaya Polyana; their touching beauty always attracted him. Many of Tolstoy’s literary works and memoirs of his family and friends convey the poetry of the orchards.