Botanical Garden of the University of Wrocław

Brief information

The university garden went through an almost complete reset: in 1945, the entire collection of garden plants and half of all the plants in the garden were lost here. The site had managed to become not only a scientific plot, but also a military position with anti-aircraft guns and ammunition stores. So the present botanical garden should be read not as a smooth old collection, but as a place that had to be assembled anew.

Founded in 1811, it is considered the second-oldest botanical garden in Poland. Its location is also important: the garden lies on the northern side of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and the Church of the Holy Cross, partly on Ostrów Tumski. The most visible postwar detail is the arched wooden bridge over the pond. It was built after sappers cleared the pond, and it became one of the garden’s symbols.

What to notice first

Here it is best to compare not the rarity of plants in general, but different ways of showing time. Large woody species grow in the arboretum, including bald cypress, sequoia, giant sequoia, cedar, and cryptomeria; 27 trees that are natural monuments are also mentioned separately, including oaks, yews, ginkgos, beeches, and plane trees. This is the living part of the garden, where age and value are tied to the trees themselves.

The rock garden shows time differently: it contains a geological section of the Wałbrzych coal deposits, built in 1856, fossilized traces of extinct plants, and fossilized tree trunks. Beside the living collections appear not plants, but their traces in stone. Another useful contrast is the pool for aquatic plants, created as a special place for a separate group of species, and the pond with the wooden bridge, behind which stands the postwar clearing of the site.