Akureyri Botanical Garden

The south side of the Eyrarlandsstofa

Bust of Jón Rögnvaldsson in the garden

The Botanical Gardens Akureyri ( Lystigarður Akureyrar ) was the first botanical garden Islands .

Geographical location

The Akureyri Botanical Garden is located about 45 meters above the western bank of Eyjafjörður in the south of the northern Icelandic city of Akureyri , about 50 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle . This extreme location makes the facility an interesting test and inspection garden .

history

Some women around Margarethe Schiöth from Akureyri founded the Park Association in 1910 to beautify their city. The city administration had already allocated one hectare of land to them last year . There was also a wooden house from around 1880, "Eyrarlandsstofa", which is still preserved today. The garden was the first public park in Iceland. The first plantings were birch trees to delimit the area and protect it from the wind. Later this was supplemented by mountain ash , larch , spruce and willow . At shrubs were Honeysuckle types, and currants planted.

Over time, additional areas were added and the park was expanded in three steps to 3.6 hectares. In addition to its function as a place of rest and relaxation, the garden is a field of experimentation. It is being tested which bushes , trees and other plants can survive on the edge of the Arctic . The park association was in charge of the facility until 1953, when Jón Rögnvaldsson took over . He had studied forestry and horticulture in Canada and co- founded the Icelandic Forestry Association in Iceland in 1935 , the aim of which is to reforest the forest , which was largely lost in Iceland in the Middle Ages . He brought his private plant collection to the park.

In 1957 the city took over the park and commissioned Rögnvaldsson to look after it. He gradually converted the park into a botanical garden, the first in Iceland. To make this possible, some of the trees that had grown in the meantime had to be removed again.

Facility

planting

In addition to arctic plants , plants from the temperate latitudes and high mountains of the earth are cultivated in the garden . In 2016 the garden consisted of about 7,000 species . The Icelandic plants are present in several parts of the garden with around 400 species. That is about 80% of the species represented in Iceland .

Other equipment

The garden is explained with multilingual boards in the entrance area. In the garden there is a bust of Margarethe Schiöth, Jón Rögnvaldsson and Matthías Jochumsson , the poet of the Icelandic national anthem , a clergyman from Akureyri . The greenhouse and cultivation department are located in the immediate vicinity of the garden . The wooden house from around 1880, "Eyrarlandsstofa", is still standing and today serves as a social room for the employees of the botanical garden. Opposite is a building in the same style, "Jónshús", named after the long-time manager of the garden in which the administration is based. There is a cafe in the garden.