Hortus Botanicus

The sum of all its parts is greater than each of its individual pieces. Yes it’s small and it may not have big a huge signature greenhouse or acres and acres of flowers but they have many different things on offer and what they have is very unique. And don’t forget it was built in 1638 and has continued ever since. Let’s start outside with a collection of tall trees; a half circle garden with dahlias and roses; a medicinal/​herb garden; the Victorian Lily pond;; and a bigger pond with dragonflies and small frogs. All are connected with dirt paths, running along streams or over bridges. All of this is against the backdrop of the beautiful 16^th century buildings. Indoors there is the palm greenhouse. The brick and glass building is more impressive than the plants inside. When we were there it was a bit sparse. But you cannot miss the climates pavilion where 3 separate climate areas (tropical, sub-​tropical, desert) are connected with winding pathways and canopy thru-​ways where you can view the upper parts of the trees or look down all around you. The small butterfly pavilion is fun and their indoor/​outdoor café is a nice place for lunch. Surprising fact: Hortus keeps bees to produce their own honey. They sell the honey in their gift shop and because of the limited supply, it’s a bit pricey at 25 Euros a jar. During the summer there are concerts on Sunday evening and during Christmas and during the Amsterdam Light Festival there are special concerts as well.
Check out the video of our visit here:

Pretty cool place to spend a couple of hours relaxing if you are a traveler. I visited in the fall so I am not sure if their spring exhibit may be better. There is a café and a nice place to sit and watch the water of the canals if you would like to rest. Don’t miss out on the greenhouse structure — you can climb to the top of the stairs and see everything from high up.

Ein schöner botanischer Garten, in dem man auch recht nett auf einen Kaffee gehen oder sogar Speisen einnehmen kann. Besonders beeindruckt haben mich das Schmetterlingshaus und das Tropenhaus, in dem man auch fast auf Dachhöhe gehen und somit alles überblicken kann.

I’m into plants, and this is a well done botanical garden. You need to enjoy the little rare things, although the giant cycad palms do cast an impressive shadow. The butterfly house, beehives, carnivorous plants, three climate house, palm house, various ponds, et al should provide something for anyone. The café is tasty too. What I particularly enjoyed was seeing so many prehistoric and endangered plants that are displayed and marked as such. This is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe, 17^th century, it presents an up-​to-​date impression. As a gardener and person interested in landscape design I found many small innovative things in these gardens. Happy I came.

This is the worst botanical garden I’ve been to by far. We went in late May, and everything was brown, wilting, and desiccated. There was one fish in a pond.. . it was not moving. Perhaps everything picks up in June, or maybe the garden was suffering some kind of blight, but it did not look well-​tended, and the butterfly garden was not as big or varied as the ones in DC. If you have free entry it couldn’t hurt to check it out, but if you pay a la carte like we did, you may regret it.

If you approach this Botanical Garden as a small park, you will be pleasantly surprised. However, compared to most foreign and domestic botanical gardens this place is not terribly impressive and even with blooming flowers, it felt more like a good place to have lunch than an actual repository for noteworthy flowers and plants.
The saving grace of this establishment is the butterfly greenhouse. Although I have been to other enclosed butterfly gardens before, this one was unique in that the butterflies easily outnumbered the people 20 to 1 and those beautiful creatures were not easy to frighten, such that if I stood still some landed on my hair and shoulders. For that alone the nearly $ 12 dollar admission price was worth it (even though my admission was free via the Amsterdam Pass).

Quite tiny botanical garden is lovely in the spring to visit and has a small butterfly house. If coming anytime other than May, it may not be worth it because it is very small. Plus, it’s € 8,50 to get in and I didn’t think it was worth it. Supposedly, it’s one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. Certainly one of the smallest. On a positive note, this was one place in the city where I felt I actually got away from the tourist crowds.

If you where going to tell me that I would spend my morning, in Amsterdam, while hungover, looking at plants? I would have laughed at you.
If you told me I would have liked it? I would have laughed harder.
However, I would not have been getting the last laugh, as I would be wrong. My morning here was a great morning. We where lucky that it was a really nice morning when we went to have a look around here and it was a nice chilled out one — being amazed at the size of some off the plants!
After this we also went to the onsite café, which was a nice place with really cool felt walls — go just to hug the wall! It be great fun!

Love this place. Nice to take a break from art museums to check our natural art. Loved the giant lily pads, and the palm house. We had a nice day to saunter around here, and we took advantage of the café as well. Had one of the best pumpkin soups of my life here! Just amazingly tasty. Wish I knew the recipe.
That said, entry was free with my Iamsterdam card. If it hadn’t been free, we probably would not have gone– and we never would have known what we’d missed. I would NOT want to go on a snowy day, though. We went in August– and though it rained lightly, it was also sunny occasionally.

It is really a nice place to have a walk in. Only it’s quite pricey. Still it’s great place to forget the busy city.

OK, it looked a little more impressive on the website, but it probably didn’t help that I came during a snowy day. The main greenhouse was pretty decent, with a couple of zones — one for the desert and one for the rain forest. But it was a bit small, and explanations were lacking. The butterfly garden was lame, and I saw just a few smaller butterflies, and the collection of cacti was not very displayed very attractively. The outdoor areas looked like it could be better, but will have to come back later to see. It’s close to Hermitage so it could be a stop on the way there, and admissions is only 8 euros. But there really wasn’t too much to see here, at least in the winter.

Its quite small compared to horti other famous. But so near the town center and near the zoo, an attraction.

No entiendo muy bien porque este jardín botánico se encuentra tan escondido y tan poco promocionado, pues es fantástico.
Era mi quinta o sexta vez en Amsterdam, y siempre se me habia quedado fuera de recorrido de mis interminables pateos por la ciudad. Esta ultima vez tenía un objetivo claro, visitar el Hortus Botanicus.
Apesar de los 7 euros de la entrada (que me pareció una sobrada), el jardín y sus invernaderos me hicieron pensar que merecia la pena.
Me pareció muy curioso el invernadero de las mariposas, además las gloriosas estaban florecidas, y fue todo un espectáculo.
Hay también un pabellón similar al del jardín botánico de Madrid en el que van recreando diferentes tipos climáticos.
Me sorprendió la cantidad de padres con niños que estaban visitando el jardín.
Genial!