Bonn Botanical Garden

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Entrance to the garden at Poppelsdorf Castle
Poppelsdorf Castle from the south

With its botanical gardens , the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn maintains one of the oldest documented and traditional botanical gardens in Germany. Under the motto Research, Preserve, Explain, Experience, around 11,000 plant species are cultivated there on approx. 12 hectares . The facilities are spread over three locations, with the historic palace garden around Clemensruh Palace in Bonn- Poppelsdorf making up the largest and most famous part. There is also the public garden for the special collection of useful plants and the non-public Melbgarten on the Venusberg .

The main tasks of the gardens as a university facility are research and teaching. For this purpose, a large amount of illustrative and research material is made available. The botanical gardens are also a recreational area for Bonn's citizens and the university's event and meeting place. With an average of 140,000 visitors a year, the gardens are the university's largest showcase for the population.

history

Historical plan, 1823
Clemens-August-Beech

The roots of the botanical garden go back to the 16th century . In the Middle Ages, a moated castle stood at the site of today's garden, and has belonged to the Electors of Cologne since around 1340 .

A Renaissance garden with orangeries has been found at the castle around 1650 . Since then, a pleasure garden for the electors of Cologne has been located here for over 200 years . The garden was often destroyed in times of war, but was always rebuilt in the same place in the current style of garden art .

Baroque garden of Elector Clemens August

Around 1720 the garden was converted into a baroque garden , the basic structure of which has been preserved to this day. The rococo castle Clemensruhe was built by Elector Clemens August von Bayern until 1746 . Two beeches were planted in his time . These survived for over 250 years and were called Clemens-August-Buchen. Her health has been critically monitored since the 1970s; On January 18, 2007, one of the trees fell due to Hurricane Kyrill and the other was felled for safety's sake due to its now isolated position.

Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn

Under the rule of the Prussians in 1818 the castle and the adjacent park became the property of the University of Bonn . In the same year the park was redesigned into a botanical garden under the first director Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck .

Under the later garden director Eduard Strasburger , Bonn (after Berlin) became one of the most important botanical gardens in Prussia. The botanical garden was totally destroyed in World War II. The reconstruction with new greenhouse facilities was not finally completed until 1979–1984.

The Botanical Gardens today

Titan arum with 3 inflorescences in May 2006. The plant is also the emblem of the Botanical Garden.

The botanical gardens are now located in three locations:

Today the botanical gardens show around 12 hectares with eleven state-of-the-art greenhouses around 11,000 different plant species, which have been recorded and managed in an electronic database since 1990.

The current director of the Botanical Garden is Maximilian Weigend . Cornelia Löhne has been the curator since 2016 .

Research projects on tribal history and the evolution of flowering plants, biodiversity , bionics and ecology are currently underway at the Bonn Botanical Gardens . Research and development projects that deal with the content of the Biodiversity Convention have been carried out since 1996 . Among other things, the International Plant Exchange Network (IPEN) emerged from these projects , which is a successful implementation tool for access and benefit sharing worldwide. Numerous important results of the R + D projects have been published by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation . In 2007/2008 the implementation of the Global Strategy for the Conservation of Plants (GSPC) in Germany will be examined and promoted.

The garden has several special collections, such as B. since 1818 an arboretum , further araucaria, araces of the Mediterranean area, a Cape Verde protection collection, endangered plants of the Rhein-Sieg district, conservation culture of the Toromiro , as well as the most extensive German collection of carnivores . Because of its cultural-historical and current importance, the Botanical Gardens were added to the Route of Garden Art between the Rhine and the Maas in 2004 . Together with the Poppelsdorf Palace, the Poppelsdorf Avenue and a guard post of the botanical garden as a monument under monument protection .

Important botanists and gardeners at the Bonn Botanical Garden

Many important plant scientists carried out research in Poppelsdorf. Important gardeners and gardeners also worked or learned here. Below is a selection:

literature

  • Wilhelm Barthlott: History of the Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn . In: Heijo Klein: Bonn - University in the City . (Publications of the Bonn City Archives, Volume 48, pp. 41-60), 1990.
  • Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn: Seed directory (formerly: Delectus seminum ). Bonn: Universität, 1871/72 - 2001/02 (series).
  • Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn (Ed.): Trees and bushes in the Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn . 1998.

Web links

Commons : Botanischer Garten Bonn  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ " Clemens August's contemporary witness fell victim to a hurricane " Clemens-August-Buchen Bot.Garten Bonn
  2. ↑ List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 45, number A 472
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Alt et al .: Archive Pictures Bonn-Poppelsdorf , Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2005. (p. 116; Fig. H. Jacobsen with Amorphophallus rivieri , 1925 in the old Victoria House of the Botanical Garden) ISBN 3-89702-880-8

Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 29 "  N , 7 ° 5 ′ 30"  E