Botanischer Garten Gießen

The Botanischer Garten Gießen, more formally the Botanischer Garten der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, is a historic botanical garden maintained by the University of Giessen. It is the oldest botanical garden in Germany still at its original site, with an entrance at Senckenbergstraße 6, Gießen, Hesse, Germany. It is open daily without charge.

The garden was founded in 1609 when Louis V, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, donated part of the palace garden to his newly established university for cultivation as a hortus medicus, following the earlier creation of such gardens at Leipzig, Heidelberg and Eichstätt. Physician and botanist Ludwig Jungermann laid out the garden over an area of 1200 m². The garden fell into decay during the Thirty Years' War, but in 1699 the construction of a coldhouse for frost-sensitive plants was recorded, and in 1720 its first glasshouse was built. By 1773 the garden was described as a botanical garden rather than hortus medicus.