So the 'design team' that gathered in Uman in 1796 brought ideas to the drawing board -- Sophie the mythological allusions of Arkadia, Felix his experience of garden-making at La Roche, and Ludwig Metzel his hydro-engineering skills enriched by tripsto Prussia, Silesia, and Saxony to study the latest machinery for working the granite they planned to harness to their vision; perhaps while in Saxony he had taken a look at the grottoes and subterranean passages in Worlitz's faux Vesuvius. And a fourth'team member' cannot be overlooked -- the eight hundred serfs who worked for decades to realize that vision. As noted by park director Ivan Kosenko, Priscilla Roosevelt, Peter Hayden and the Rodichkins in their studies of Russian and Ukrainian gardens, none of these great landscapes could have been made without the muscle and considerable talents of these mostly unknown men. The surnames of serfs who worked on Sofiyivka survive in the Central Record Office in Kiev, conjuring up such men as Ivan and Ilya Vdovichenko and Korniy Kuzmenko who dug the waterways, hauled the stone, and carved the grottoes. As a recent guide to the park exclaims, 'Let there be eternal glory and honour to them!'
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