Munich's Botanical Garden
Many urbanites suffer from an overdose of concrete and the color gray at least once a year. When this happens, there isn’t always time or the opportunity to get away for an injection of nature’s antidote. Münchner, however, have the cure for the city blues—the Botanical Garden. Bordering on Nymphenburger Park, the garden is salve for the soul with areas for every kind of plant, flower and terrain imaginable, either outdoors or in controlled environments. Every season brings new displays to be enjoyed in formal garden settings as well as along meandering paths though rhododendron thickets, around ponds with lily pads, sun-bathing turtles and iridescent dragonflies or in arboritae, where black, tufted-eared squirrels—seen nowhere else in Munich—make regular appearances. Climb the Alpinum hill, a rock garden home to a huge array of alpine plants and flowers, some very rare, or visit the desert and tropical environments of the hothouse. Thirty-three-year veteran botanical gardener Hans Schmitt offers free seasonal tours every second Sunday at 10:00, meeting at the hothouse entrance (Gewächshauseingang), Menzingerstrasse 65. The next holistic pick- me-up is May 13.