Subtropical Greenhouse, Science Museum of Jinan Botanical Garden (济南植物园科普馆亚热带温室)

Jinan Botanical Garden was created by the city's parks bureau, which funded its construction from March 2004 at Bucun in Zhangqiu District. Opened on 26 September 2006, it covers more than 1,000 mu and in 2022 held some 533 species from 88 families, close to 400,000 plants in all, laid out in more than ten specialist gardens. It is rated a national AAAA tourist site.

The science museum and its greenhouse came out of a programme to upgrade the garden's older section. Listed early in 2023 among the city's new park projects, the scheme took a plot of about 7,898 m² in the centre of the garden, on ground formerly occupied by a village. It provided for a 6,888.75 m² building combining an exhibition hall with a subtropical greenhouse, and for the introduction of some 600 new kinds of plants.

The building opened on 29 December 2023, together with a large orchid show for the New Year. Work on the exhibition halls continued afterwards, and in November 2024 the city announced that the museum was fully open, with four themed halls, a circular hall and a rest area built around the theme of the banyan.

The 6,888 m² building has two parts: indoor exhibition halls devoted to science education and a subtropical greenhouse. The irregular plot stretches between the garden's main avenue to the west and Qiushi Lake to the east, with a natural fall of three metres. The design idea, summed up in the phrase 'raise the mountain, look at the water' (起山望水), works with this slope down towards the lake. According to the project text published by an architecture platform, the designers set out to merge the building into the garden's ecosystem rather than set it against the landscape, and to make visitors aware, as they walk, of changes in gradient, humidity, temperature and light.

The greenhouse is conceived as a 'floating garden' (悬浮花园) meant to feel like a forest in the mist. Waterfalls and streams, crossed by small bridges, shape the interior landscape. The sources consulted give neither the greenhouse's own floor area nor its height, and they do not describe its frame or glazing.

The greenhouse brings together tropical and subtropical plants from 86 families, 198 genera and more than 600 species. The original brief announced around 600 kinds of plants new to the garden, with ferns and orchids as the representative groups, arranged around waterfalls and streams to form a subtropical garden landscape. Birdsong and the sound of insects accompany the running water.

For the opening, at the turn of 2024, a large show brought together nearly 200 kinds of orchids and more than 3,000 plants. The neighbouring halls extend the greenhouse with displays on botany, designed in particular to teach young people about the natural sciences and to host school study trips on plants.

The museum sits at the heart of the garden, between Qiushi Lake to the east and the rose garden to the west, so a visit can move straight from the greenhouse to the rose beds and on to the lakeshore. The rest of the garden unfolds through its specialist gardens: bamboo, herbs, coloured foliage, ginkgos and magnolias, and a garden of medicinal and aromatic plants.

With its controlled climate the greenhouse is worth a visit in any season, and temporary shows such as the New Year orchid display give reasons to return. School groups can follow a programme of introductory botany there.