When Anton Chekhov bought the Melikhovo estate, there was a very modest low house with a terrace, a front entrance with colored glass and an overgrown garden. The Chekhovs took great pains to restore the estate because it was the family’s first home of their own. Before that, in Taganrog and Moscow, they had rented accommodations and moved frequently. The writer’s father Pavel Yegorovich, a former serf, supervised the reconstruction of Melikhovo. The house was soon cleaned and renovated, the orchard was arranged, and the garden was planted with rare vegetables. Anton Pavlovich wrote at the end of the first month in his estate:

Reseda, sweet peas, and tobacco bloomed in a big round flowerbed in front of the terrace. Behind it, Chekhov’s favorite roses were planted in a semicircle, and near the balcony — two beds of heliotropes, also planted at his request — “for ardent guests”. A linden alley ran behind the flower garden; a small garden was laid out; ceps grew on the lawn under weeping birches and orange milky caps — under the fir trees that served as a fence. Anton Pavlovich liked to get up early in the morning and pick mushrooms on his plot.

Outside the gate, facing the field, there was a bench where Chekhov would often sit in the evenings, especially if there were guests. The artist Maria Timofeevna Drozdova, a friend of the writer’s sister, regularly visited Melikhovo. She found comfort and warmth in Chekhovs’ home when she was homesick. Every day they went out for sketches together with Maria Pavlovna and depicted Melikhovo environs, nooks and interiors of the estate.

The artist recalled,