Large display glasshouses of the Bern Botanical Garden (BOGA)

Bern's first botanic garden was created in 1789 on the Vannazhalde, below the site of today's Federal Palace, by a private society of naturalists that included Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach. Moved as early as 1790, it was followed by a series of gardens in the city until the cantonal government decided in 1859 to buy land in the Rabbental for a new garden and institute. Architects Dähler & Schultz won the competition under cantonal architect Friedrich Salvisberg, and the engineer Durheim drew up the garden plan. In 1862 four first glasshouses and an orangery were inaugurated on the terrace laid out in front of the institute building.

In 1905 a 13-metre palm house was built behind the institute. In the early 1970s architects Kissling & Kiener designed three new large glasshouses; the University of Bern dates their construction to 1969–1972, the practice that later renovated them to 1971–1975. They opened on 26 May 1976, and the old palm house was demolished in 1977.

Threatened with closure by budget cuts in 1999, the garden was supported from 2002 by a foundation and taken over by the University of Bern in 2013. The roof glass of the large houses was replaced in 2011; from 2020 to 2022 the firm Suter+Partner renewed the façade glazing, ventilation and climate systems, which had reached the end of their service life. In May 2026 the garden celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the three houses.

The three large houses form a themed group: palm house, fern house and succulent house, that is, two tropical sections and one devoted to plants of arid zones. Built in steel and glass, with concrete and large glazed panels according to the university's architectural notes, they reach far down the slope towards the Aare. The university presents them as witnesses to a time when fascination with plant diversity lay at the heart of public education; they are now listed monuments.

The 1862 garden had small glasshouses, which the university describes as graceful functional architecture, and an institute building housing the lecture hall, the botanical collections, the gardener's house and, in the connecting wing, the orangery or cool house; that building was remodelled and raised by one storey in 1905.

After the roof glass was replaced in 2011, the 2020–2022 renovation dealt with the façade glazing and the ventilation and climate systems, following a concept that respects the formal language of the early 1970s. Because the tropical plantings stayed in place throughout, the works had to fit into tightly restricted windows.

The palm house displays tropical rainforest vegetation and useful plants such as banana, pineapple, sugar cane and coffee. The fern house re-creates a tropical montane forest with tree ferns and cycads, while the succulent house gathers the vegetation of hot, dry semi-deserts. Four further glasshouses complete the picture: the orchid house, the Mediterranean house, the steppe house and the 'Gondwana house'.

Covering more than two hectares, the garden grows some 6,000 species; its alpine garden brings together mountain plants from Switzerland, Asia and North America. In May 2026, for the fiftieth anniversary of the large houses, a 'magic plants' trail devoted to ethnobotany opened through the witch hazel grove.

The garden occupies the Rabbental at Altenbergrain 21, and its large glasshouses step down the slope towards the Aare. Owned by the Canton of Bern and run by the university, it offers guided tours; on 30 May 2026 it took part in Open House Bern with tours of the large houses for their jubilee. A visit links the tropical houses, the smaller collection houses, the alpine garden and the ethnobotanical trail through the witch hazel grove. In town, the sites of earlier gardens, from the Vannazhalde below the Federal Palace to the Kochergasse, recall the stages of Bern's long botanical history.