History
The Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University
is located near Brno’s centre at the intersection of the streets Kotlářská and Veveří, adjacent to the Faculty of Science’s Kotlářská Campus. The garden was founded in 1922 by Josef Podpěra, the first Professor of Botany at the newly established Masaryk University (founded in 1919), on a 1.5-ha plot that was previously used as the kitchen garden of the former almshouse whose buildings were transferred to the new Faculty of Science (Vacek & Bureš 2001). Being mainly a plant geographer, Podpěra designed the garden following both systematic and ecological-phytogeographical principles. The systematic part of the garden contained plants arranged by families, though there were also displays of the Linnaean system, Mendel’s hybridization experiments, and medicinal and crop plants. The ecological-phytogeographical part represented major plant communities of southern Moravia and Central European mountain ranges and examples of various plant formations of temperate Eurasia. This original historical design has, with small changes, been maintained to this day. The first three greenhouses were built in 1924–1926, one with a pool for Victoria regia which first came into bloom in 1926 and immediately became an extremely popular attraction with the people of Brno. The garden was damaged during WWII by bombing by Allied air forces and by tree cuttings, but was restored after the war. In the late 1940s and 1950s, it was involved in applied projects to support socialist agriculture, in particular an attempt to introduce almond plantations in southern Moravia, though it later resumed its primary focus on education. The current greenhouses were built in 1995–1997. Although the Department of Botany and Zoology was moved from the Kotlářská Campus in 2006, the garden remains in this original location and also serves the public and other education institutions in addition to Masaryk University.
The garden is a popular place in the city of Brno, regularly visited by many people. It is open daily throughout the year, with free access to the outdoor section and moderate a entrance fee to the greenhouses. The garden organizes annual exhibitions of carnivorous plants (May), succulents (September), tropical and subtropical crop plants (October) and exotic birds (November). Perhaps the most attractive annual event in the garden for the general public is the Jazz Evening held in August when Victoria cruziana opens its flowers after sunset. There are many sculptures and other art works in the garden, both in the greenhouses and outdoors. The oldest is a frog sculpture with a fountain from 1947 at one of the pools. The compositions made from various rock types in front of the greenhouses were built by the sculptor Jan Šimek in 1997 (Chytrá 2012).
About 2500 plant species have been planted in the outdoor collections and another 2500 species in the greenhouses. The garden and the adjacent area of the Faculty of Science’s Kotlářská Campus together harbour more than 1000 individuals of 520 species of woody plants and recent surveys recorded 48 species of bryophytes and more than 90 species of macromycetes (Chytrá 2012).