Old Botanical Garden (Kiel)

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Old Botanical Garden
The garden is open all year round

The Old Botanical Garden is a public park in Kiel .

History and location

The first botanical garden in Kiel was laid out in 1669 as " hortus medicus " in the palace garden and is therefore the sixth oldest in Germany. Gardens followed at Falckstrasse (1727) and Prüne (1803). All of these gardens no longer exist and were built over after their abandonment.

The old botanical garden was opened in 1884. The site was originally laid out as an English landscape garden in 1825 and was redesigned into a botanical garden from 1878 to 1884 under Adolf Engler . It is the first botanical garden in the world to be laid out purely from a plant-geographical perspective. It is located north of the city center, in close proximity to the Kiel Fjord , the Kunsthalle Kiel and the university clinics.

From 1975 a new botanical garden was laid out on the university campus in Olshausenstrasse, which opened in 1985. In 1978 the plants moved to what is now the fifth botanical garden in Kiel. What remained were the significant trees and bushes and the flower bulbs, which have been gracefully overgrown since then. In order to prevent overbuilding of the Old Botanical Garden, the "Association for the Preservation and Promotion of the Old Botanical Garden Kiel eV" was founded. It was possible to achieve that the garden was preserved as a public park and is still open all year round. Public tours have been taking place through the garden since 1980 and in 1992 it was designated a natural and cultural monument.

Park and plants

The garden in autumn

Layout of the garden

The approx. 2.5 hectare area has a hilly character with an altitude difference of over 20 meters. In addition to the partly very old woody stock consisting of over 280 species, the Old Botanical Garden also has a diverse herbaceous flora. There are two ponds in the garden, lawn areas and some herbaceous beds. The slopes are planted with bulbous plants and offer extraordinary blooms in spring. The whole area is criss-crossed by numerous winding paths, which underline the natural character of the facility. The old greenhouses are no longer preserved.

Special plants

One of the largest ginkgo trees in Schleswig-Holstein can be found in the Old Botanical Garden in Kiel . The larger of the two primeval sequoias is one of the oldest of its kind on mainland Europe (estimated planting: around 1948, grown from seeds of the Arnold Arboretum ) and a coastal sequoia, which is rather untypical for this climatic region, can also be seen there.

Art and buildings

Literature House
Pavilion with a wrought iron crown

Sculptures by the artist Susan Walke are on display in the Old Botanical Garden and literary activities are often held.

The former house of the garden inspector (built in 1906 in half-timbered style) has housed the Schleswig-Holstein Literature House since 1998, where readings take place regularly.

A pavilion with a wrought iron crown was built on the highest point of the garden in 1891 . The octagonal brick building offers a beautiful view of the garden and the Kiel Fjord from its viewing platform. In the pavilion there is a permanent exhibition on the history of the Botanical Gardens in Kiel. On the north side of the building there is a niche in which a replica of the foundation board of the third botanical garden can be seen, the original is in today's botanical garden. Originally, the niche always provided a shady place for the first public exhibition of marine algae.

Like the inspector's house, the tool shed was also built in a half-timbered style and thus blends harmoniously into the garden.

The former greenhouse, which was built in 1884/85 together with the Botanical Institute, is located southwest of the observation pavilion. The brick building is 31 meters long and 5 meters deep. It has been expanded several times with glass buildings, which however no longer exist today. Only the core building made of brick with the gardener's and stoker's apartment, with potting rooms and a full basement are preserved. The so-called pot house is a unique monument to the history of botany in Schleswig-Holstein, but it is in need of restoration.

literature

  • Margita Marion Meyer: The pot house in the old botanical garden in Kiel - a monument to the history of botany in Schleswig-Holstein. In: Monument. Journal for Monument Preservation in Schleswig-Holstein. 19/2012, ISSN  0946-4549 , pp. 32-34.
  • Association for the preservation and promotion of the Old Botanical Garden Kiel eV: Leaflet Old Botanical Garden Kiel, 2002
  • Association for the preservation and promotion of the Old Botanical Garden in Kiel eV: Old Botanical Garden: Inventory plan and list of trees in the Old Botanical Garden in Kiel . Edited by Hans Fuhrmann and Michael Treichel. Kiel 1996.

Web links

Commons : Old Botanical Garden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem: Adolf Engler - A life for botany
  2. ↑ Margita Marion Meyer: The pot house in the old botanical garden in Kiel - a monument to the history of botany in Schleswig-Holstein. In: Monument. Journal for Monument Preservation in Schleswig-Holstein. 19/2012, ISSN  0946-4549 , p. 33.
  3. ↑ Margita Marion Meyer: The pot house in the old botanical garden in Kiel - a monument to the history of botany in Schleswig-Holstein. In: Monument. Journal for Monument Preservation in Schleswig-Holstein. 19/2012, ISSN  0946-4549 , p. 34.

Coordinates: 54 ° 19 ′ 51 ″  N , 10 ° 8 ′ 49 ″  E