Planten un Blomen
Planten un Blomen (Low German for "plants and flowers") is Hamburg's green lung in the middle of the city. The 47-hectare park was built as early as 1821 and the very first plane tree planted at the Dammtor entrance still welcomes visitors today.
The park, with its many themed gardens, invites you to stroll, look around and sit back and relax, and includes a tropical house as well as Europe's largest Japanese garden. Admission is free every day, including public holidays, and to events in the park. There are various gastronomic offers.
How the park became "Planten un Blomen
The ramparts, which date back to the 17th century, were used in earlier times as a defensive ring for the city of Hamburg. At the end of the 18th century, however, the ramparts were useless as military protection and so an art gardener named Altmann was given the task of creating a green space in English design from the hilly green spaces.
At the beginning of the 20th century the park was then restructured by the construction of various buildings and while the eastern part of the grounds had to give way to various new buildings, the western part was extended by additional elements, such as the cemeteries at Dammtor, a former botanical garden and the once famous zoological garden of Alfred Brehms, known for "Brehms Tierleben".
The name of today's park was first suggested on the occasion of a Low German garden show in 1935 called "Planten un Blomen", where the previous green space was turned into a real park for the first time by the garden architect Plomin.
In the following decades, the park was structurally altered several times by adding or merging park areas.
Highlights of the park
Today, Hamburg's green oasis, which is centrally located in the Hanseatic city, inspires with a variety of offers and stations that invite you to marvel, to linger or to move. In addition to gastronomic points of contact, such as cafés and restaurants, the park also offers areas for active, sporting activities, such as an ice rink and roller skating rink, a mini-golf course or playgrounds.
Thematic gardens, such as the apothecary garden, the rose garden or the tropical garden, along with other park elements, such as the music pavilion, the water steps or the Japanese tea house, represent only a small section of the diversity in Hamburg's "Planten un Blomen".
