Houseplants XL
A visit to the greenhouses in Berlin's botanical garden
A few weeks ago, I took a break from taking care of my own houseplants to visit their (outsized) cousins in the glasshouses of the Berlin botanical garden. Although I’d been to Berlin numerous of times, I’d never made it to the botanical garden. I had zero expectations—I just had an afternoon to myself, the sun was shining (when it wasn’t pouring rain), and I was in the mood for something new.
Of all the pictures I took during that long weekend in Berlin, I took most of them in the botanical garden. In this post, I’ve tried to winnow my selection down, and share my favourites with you—I’m sure you’ll recognise some of your favourite houseplants just like I did!
The Berlin botanical garden opened in its current location in 1899: I love the plan below from the original design. The entire feel of the garden and the glasshouses fits in with the ambitions of other botanical gardens: the collecting and classifying of plants through a systematic overview per part of the world.
Like many structures in Berlin, the botanical garden also suffered during World War II, although I couldn’t fit an exact description of just how much of the glasshouses, for instance, were destroyed. The lay-out of the original garden is still the same as far as I can tell: as the afternoon wound down, I wandered through the arboretum and climbed the artificial hills of the alpine landscapes.
The Victoria glasshouse, the most impressive of all, was reopened in 1950. I loved its nineteenth-century feel and how the gardens are designed around it—I like to think that in my garden I’m pretty good at creating sightlines, but this is absolutely next level work.
I started my tour around the glasshouses at the succulents, where I recognised the Cressula ovata whose far smaller sibling lives on my living room windowsill.
Although I liked seeing these succulents, I was still fairly underwhelmed in this part of the glasshouses. That is until I hit the cacti-house and nearly impaled myself trying to take all the pictures of the impressive cacti that grow in it.
Continuing on through the glasshouses, I started to pay attention to the people as well as the plants themselves. On a Saturday in late March, the botanical gardens seemed to attract all kinds of people, though relatively few tourists as far as I could tell. A woman and three teenagers sat on a bench with sketchpads on their laps, drawing the tropical plants in front of them. A small boy ran through one of the glasshouses shouting how badly it smelled— he was followed by his grandmother who said that surely it wasn’t that bad (it was rank, I agree with the little boy). At some points, smaller paths threaded their way through the jungle of the plants and I surprised a few couples entwined on benches. A man had set up a tripod and camera in the cacti house, waiting for something to be just right before. A young couple dragged a stroller up the steep metal stairs, gently unwrapping their small baby as the temperatures rose to 25 degrees Celsius.
I sought out familiar plants like the ones below, marvelling at the leaves of the huge Monstera deliciosa climbing up an artificial structure and frankly pleased to see that even in the care of experts, the leaves of the Strelitzia nicolai tend to tear.
Increasingly, my eye was drawn out: to the intertwining of leaves and branches above my head and the glass panes that separated the tropical worlds from the fickle weather of Berlin in early Spring.
I got just a little bit obsessed with a particular corner of one of the glasshouses, where the light hit the misted windows just so, and the shapes of the plants contrasted with the straight lines of the glass house’s metal structure.
Out in the gardens themselves, all was still in deep rest and several paths were blocked or dug up completely in preparation for Spring to truly arrive. Tire tracks made the already muddy paths even muddier, but I loved how secluded this made the garden feel.
J. and I are already planning our next trip to Berlin and I’m looking forward to seeing the gardens during a different season.
What I’ve been up to
A few weeks ago I wrote about leaf spot on one of my oldest plants. I’m not quite sure yet whether the initial treatment worked, so I might repeat it.
Over at Female Owned, I wrote a lot about money: a theme that was on my mind in March. I created a guide for small business owners and freelancers around it and asked my paid subscribers about their money stories. Just before I left for Berlin, I also wrote about the joys of being unavailable.
Thank you for going along on this virtual tour of the Berlin botanic gardens. I hope you enjoyed it 🌱
I’m planning an update-post soon, to tell you how the plants and projects I wrote about previously are doing, and am putting together a guide to repotting as we’re entering repotting-season here in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the meantime, have a great rest of your week!
Adding Berlin to my list of gardens to visit ... Do you have any recommendations in Paris?