Kölner Volksgarten – Garden Monument with a Long History

In 1889, the Volksgarten park was opened presenting vast lawns for play and recuperation in a gently modelled landscape with undulating hills and valleys. The optical centre of this landscaped park is a big boat pond with a curvy shoreline that forms many little bays. The trees and bushes were planted along the shoreline in…

Rheinpark Köln – Garden Monument from the 1950s

Today the Rheinpark created for the Bundesgartenschau (German garden show) in 1957 still largely has its original form and so reflects the garden architecture of the 1950s. The central location of the park on the right bank of the river Rhine is the reason for some of its outstanding features: on the one hand the spatial…

Forest Botanical Garden – A Blossoming Paradise in Southern Cologne

In the early 1960s, a former field was planted with a great biodiversity of trees, bushes, and shrubs from all parts of the world. Throughout the seasons, the forest botanical garden offers nature experiences of a particular kind: a ravine full of rhododendrons, a heather garden, a field overflowing with different types of peonies, and…

Flora – Botanical Garden Köln

The Flora-Park was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné in 1864 in a “mixed German garden style”. It contains elements of style from the French Baroque, the Italian Renaissance and English landscape gardens. The centre of the park today remains the glass palace (orangery), an architectural structure of cast iron and glass which was particularly noteworthy…