Whoever visits the Palmengarten from Monday, 17 August, can look forward to a few more relaxations. From that day on, the Tropicarium and the Subantarctic House will reopen. Due to the corona-related regulations in March, the Palmengarten had to keep its show houses closed. "For many of our visitors* this was a painful break", says Palmengarten director Katja Heubach. "Because even if our open air is beautiful in the summer months and there is something to discover at every corner - for many, walking through the vegetation of the tropics and the subantarctic, under palm trees, between cacti, cocoa trees and coffee bushes is simply a highlight."
The world's only star-shaped greenhouse complex from the 1980s is now also technically up to date. Since 2018, ventilation systems, water and irrigation systems, heating systems, electrical systems and the automatic building control system have been renewed at the Nordstern. All this was done without interrupting operations, as the Tropicarium's gardeners admittedly still had to care for their plants. The North Star reopened in February 2019 after this work was completed, and the South Star was scheduled to open in March of this year. Now, guests can visit both houses again - Monday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
To comply with applicable spacing rules, guests move through both houses using a one-way system. In goes the wet tropics in the North Star, on over a connecting bridge into the South Star and the dry tropics, and from there back out into the open. In the Subantarctic House, too, the one-way principle regulates visitor traffic. In all enclosed spaces, visitors are required to wear mouth-to-nose protection and maintain a minimum distance of 1.5 metres.
One restriction remains, however: The historic Palm House will remain closed to visitors. Work is currently taking place there in preparation for the anniversary year - the Palmengarten will be 150 years old in 2021 - which will not allow any visitor traffic. The carnivorous plants on the first floor of the Siesmayerstraße entrance showhouse are also not on view.
"We ask all our visitors* to abide by the rules currently in place. The first priority is their own safety and that of other visitors*," said Heubach. "Equally important is the protection of our colleagues. They've done a great job over the past weeks and months of caring for our valuable plant population and want to continue to do so."
The Tropicarium displays tropical plants in their ecological contexts. The North Star is home to the flora of the humid tropics - plants of montane rainforests and cloud forests, lowland evergreen rainforests, alternate-humidity monsoon and passate rainforests, and mangroves and coastal forests. In the South Star, plants of the dry tropical regions are found with the vegetation of dry forests and savannas, thorn forests as well as the semi-deserts and cloud deserts. The Subantarctic House features flora from the zones of Antarctica: Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands and the South Island of New Zealand.
You can also find more info at: www.palmengarten.de
