The South-Siberian Botanical Garden (SSBG) was opened by order of the Minister of Higher, General and Secondary Special Education of the RSFSR in December 1979 as an independent structural unit of Altai State University (AltGU). The idea of its creation belongs to Irina V. Vereshchagina, Irina Viktorovna verishchagina a senior researcher of the Institute of Horticulture of Siberia. For a long time she was the curator of the botanical garden, invested a lot of labor and effort in the creation of collections of open ground. At the same time, Irina Vereschagina developed a systematic plan. In addition to Irina Viktorovna, at the origins of the Botanical Garden were also: A.M. Maloletko, L.V. Kryvshchenko, Т.А. Terekhina.
From January 1988 to the present time the director of the Botanical Garden is Shmakov Aleksandr Ivanovich. In 1990 Alexander Shmakov successfully defended his PhD thesis “Ferns of Altai, Tien Shan and Semirechye”, and in 2000 he defended his doctoral dissertation on “Fern of Russia”.
The first directors who started writing the history of the botanical garden were:
1 Vladimir Pavlovich Shkurov – Director of the Botanical Garden from March 17, 1980 to April 14, 1981.
2. Vasily Panteleevich Filatov – acted as director from April 8, 1981, and director from May 13, 1982 to December 6, 1986.
3. Vitaly Dmitrievich Kiryushov – Director of the Botanical Garden from December 6, 1984 to April 16, 1986.
4. Svetlana Nikolaevna Borovitskaya (Khabarova) – Director from December 6, 1986 to 1988.