Tropical Conservatory, Jerusalem Botanical Gardens

Opened in 1986 within the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, on the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus, the garden's tropical conservatory recreates under glass an equatorial climate that the city, perched at 800 meters of altitude, never naturally experiences. Fully renovated, it reopened in autumn 2019 and today houses around 300 species — banana trees, coffee plants, orchids and cacti — arranged around a separate desert section, all tended by a single gardener, according to the garden's management. This greenhouse is just one of the site's nine phytogeographic sections, which together bring together more than 6,400 plant species native to Australia, southern Africa, Europe, North America and the Mediterranean basin.