Old Botanical Garden of Göttingen University

Göttingen, Germany, Germany

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The Old Botanical Garden of Göttingen University (German: Alter Botanischer Garten der Universität Göttingen) is a historic 4.5-hectare botanical garden maintained by the University of Göttingen, located in the Altstadt at Untere Karspüle 1 adjacent to the city wall in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany.

The garden was established in 1736 by Swiss anatomist and botanist Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) as a hortus medicus (medical garden) and gradually expanded via adjacent plots within and outside the city wall. By 1806 it featured a tropical greenhouse, orangery, and cycad house, with additional greenhouses added in 1830 and 1857, though its tropical plant collection was destroyed during World War II and was replenished postwar with a major collection of wild plants from central Europe.

Today the garden contains 17,500 accessions representing about 14,000 species, forming one of the largest and most significant scientific plant collections in Germany, with major collections of bromeliads (about 1,500 species including 500 Tillandsia species), cacti (approximately 1,500 species), ferns (about 550 species including rare Central European ferns), marsh and aquatic plants (ca. 300 species), and mosses (100 species).

Its major areas include a systemic garden with 1,200 species, arboretum, pond, rockery, useful and medicinal plant garden, and weed collection, while eight greenhouses house bromeliads, orchids, carnivorous plants, tropical rainforest plants, tropical water plants, cycads, aroids, cacti and other succulents, and ferns.