Talvipuutarha (Helsinki Winter Garden)

The Winter Garden began as a private initiative. Jakob Julius af Lindfors, a major general, businessman and chairman of the Finnish Horticultural Society (Suomen puutarhayhdistys), had the glasshouse built from 1891 and then handed it over to the society; the architect Gustaf Nyström drew up the plans. It opened to the public in 1893 and, in keeping with the founder's wishes, access to the collections has been free from the start. The first plants came from the Helsinki Botanic Garden and from commercial nurseries in St Petersburg and Central Europe.

In 1907 the City of Helsinki bought the garden together with the society's other buildings. That same year a camellia arrived from Villa Hakasalmi; it remains one of the oldest plants in the house. In 1924 the city gardener Svante Olsson laid out the rose garden in front of the building, on the side facing Helsinginkatu.

A condition survey in 2007 found the steel frame in poor shape. The glasshouse closed in spring 2010: every pane was taken out and destroyed, some 40 tonnes of debris, and the steel members were sandblasted and repainted. The surviving plants went back in during summer 2011 and the building reopened that autumn, although several large specimens could not be kept and one of the two old camellias did not survive the works. A Christmas exhibition has been held there every year since the 1970s.

The building is a row of three glazed rooms: the palm room in the centre, flanked by the cactus room on one side and the west wing on the other. Its glass skin is carried on a steel frame. The rear wall of the palm room still bears a decorative mural painted in 1893 by Salomo Wuorio, the year the glasshouse opened.

The 2010–2011 renovation dealt with both the envelope and the structure. Because the 2007 survey had shown the frame to be deteriorating, all of the glazing was replaced and the steel parts were sandblasted and repainted before the plants were brought back. Inside, a pool stocked with koi carp adds water to the planting. Outside, the rose garden designed in 1924 occupies a warm, sunny bed in front of the facade, which is also the first spot in the garden where spring bulbs come into flower.

The Winter Garden holds more than 200 different plants. The central palm room combines palms, large monsteras and a southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) with ixoras and grapevines. Its best-known resident is the camellia brought from Villa Hakasalmi in 1907, now more than a century old, whose pale pink flowers open between October and mid-February, often around Christmas.

The cactus room gathers cacti and other succulents, including aloes and jade plants, as well as orchids; the cacti flower most freely in May–June and in November–December. The west wing serves as a meeting space and shows seasonal flowering pot plants alongside the kind of houseplants found in Finnish homes in the early twentieth century. Outdoors, the rose garden is in bloom from July to September.

The Winter Garden stands at Hammarskjöldintie 1 A, in the Eläintarha parkland north of Töölönlahti bay and next to the Olympic Stadium; admission is free all year round. Half an hour to an hour is enough to see the three rooms. The camellias flower from October to mid-February and a Christmas exhibition is staged at the end of the year, while the outdoor rose garden is at its best from July to September. A walk around Töölönlahti leads back towards the city centre, and the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, with glasshouses of its own, lies less than two kilometres away.