Botanical Garden, Bonn

Bonn, Germany, Germany

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The Botanical Garden, Bonn (Botanischer Garten Bonn), also known as the Botanical Gardens of the University of Bonn, is one of Germany's oldest and most significant botanical gardens, spanning 13 hectares in the heart of Bonn and maintained by the University of Bonn.

The gardens date back to about 1340 as castle grounds for the Archbishop of Cologne, were transformed into a Renaissance garden around 1650, and reworked as a Baroque garden in 1720 with the rococo Poppelsdorf Palace completed in 1746; when the University of Bonn was founded in 1818, the garden became focused on scientific botany under its first garden director Dr. Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck.

By 1900, it was Germany's second-largest botanical garden after Berlin's, but was completely destroyed in World War II and reconstructed between 1979-1984 with two new conservatories. Today the garden cultivates about 8,000 to 11,000 plant species, including endangered local Rhineland species like Lady's Slipper Orchids and protected species such as Sophora toromiro from Easter Island.