Glasshouses of the Mendel University Botanical Garden and Arboretum (skleníky MENDELU)

The idea of a botanical garden at Brno's agricultural college dates from 1926, when it was a small plot devoted to plants useful to agriculture. In 1938 Professor August Bayer founded an arboretum to train forestry engineers. On 1 November 1967 an official decision provided for a new botanical garden and arboretum on the site of the former forestry arboretum, with the garden laid out by Professor Ivar Otruba.

The orchid collection joined the arboretum in 1967, drawn from two private collections of about 350 species and hybrids. In 1970 the garden set up one of the first in-vitro orchid propagation laboratories in Czechoslovakia, and major construction work began. Around 1995 the original glasshouses were judged unsafe and energy-inefficient. A new complex was started in 1996, together with a building extension and classrooms, and was finished in 1997. According to the garden, the lighter structure markedly improved the quality of the orchids.

Butterflies came later: the first tropical butterfly exhibition was held at the end of winter 1999, alongside an orchid show, after a visit to the butterfly house in Erfurt. After a four-year absence the exhibition returned in September 2022, with about forty species and nearly 1,300 pupae ordered.

On the official plan, the 1996-1997 complex stands in the upper part of the garden, around the administration building and classrooms. The orchid collection page counts four glasshouses covering about 800 m², while botany.cz gives 850 m². botany.cz mentions a project by Ivar Otruba as the basis of the works begun from 1970, without saying whether it covers the glasshouses.

Reports on the 2022 butterfly exhibition give a glimpse of the interior. In the butterfly glasshouse the ceiling is three to four metres above a pool, low walls and rocks, and nets are stretched to keep the butterflies in and away from cold, damp glass. The heat and humidity needed for hatching come from underfloor heating and misting nozzles, while the air-conditioning is started during preparations that take several days.

The garden plan also lists an alpine glasshouse on the southern slopes; botany.cz describes it as partly sunken, protecting delicate plants from excess winter damp.

The tropical orchid collection numbers about 4,000 taxa according to the garden's own page. Totals vary from page to page: up to nearly 2,000 botanical species and 3,000 to 3,500 hybrids on some, 1,500 botanical species on botany.cz. The plants come from Central and South America, Southeast Asia, Africa (above all Madagascar), Australia and New Guinea. The genera singled out are Paphiopedilum, Dendrobium, Bulbophyllum, Stanhopea and Phalaenopsis; a stock of commercially interesting hybrids includes Cattleya, Laelia, Brassavola, Cymbidium and Oncidium. The in-vitro laboratory holds about 1,000 taxa and the collection serves as a CITES rescue centre. Tillandsias, 200 to 400 taxa depending on the page, are often grown alongside.

Cattleya bloom in autumn, a season when the orchid glasshouses also open. During butterfly exhibitions about twenty tropical species are shown, each living one to two weeks; the pupae come from a breeder in Stratford, in the United Kingdom. At the Vienna International Orchid Show, which the garden has attended since 2010, it won in 2026 a gold medal for its display and five silver and six bronze medals for its plants.

The glasshouses stand in the upper part of the garden, near the administration building; the main entrance is at 1 třída Generála Píky, close to the stops served by trams 7 and 9. They open on weekdays and during the garden's exhibitions, including non-working days: "Orchids and Butterflies" at the end of winter (13 to 29 March in 2026), Barvy podzimu (16 to 25 October 2026), as well as IRIS and Letní víkend. The orchid glasshouses also open in autumn, when the Cattleya flower.

Guided tours run at weekends during exhibitions, starting from the administration building. The 11 hectares outdoors, with their collections of irises, rock plants and trees, justify extending the visit; the other university botanical garden in Brno, that of Masaryk University, has its own glasshouses about 1.7 km away.