Greenhouses of the Faculty of Tropical Agriculture Botanical Garden (ČZU, Suchdol)

The botanical garden of the Faculty of Tropical Agriculture began life as a research and teaching tool. It started operating on 1 January 1968 under the name 'Greenhouses of the Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture' (ITSZ), providing experimental, working and teaching space for that institute and for the agronomy faculty of the Czech University of Agriculture.

The subtropical house was the first to be planted, with species that need cooler winter temperatures, above all citrus that Professor František Pospíšil had brought in from Crimea. In 1972 the institute began issuing an Index seminum, and in 1972–1973 the tropical house was built, described as the first 'atypical' greenhouse of the complex. Pospíšil founded the national citrus collection in 1974, and a bench greenhouse for scientific research and collections of rare plants completed the facilities in 1975.

The garden joined the Union of Botanic Gardens of the Czech Republic in 2011. On 1 January 2013 the Institute of Tropics and Subtropics (ITS) became the Faculty of Tropical Agriculture (FTZ), whose name the garden now carries.

The greenhouses cover about 1,400 m² within a garden of roughly 3,800 m² inside the grounds of the Czech University of Agriculture, at Kamýcká 129 in Suchdol. Two of them are open to the public, each with its own climate.

The subtropical house, the oldest, is kept at lower winter temperatures for the plants that need them, citrus first among them. The tropical house, built in 1972–1973, is presented in the garden's official history as its first 'atypical' greenhouse; the sources consulted name no designer and give neither its dimensions nor its materials. The bench greenhouse added in 1975 serves scientific research and the collections of rare plants.

The campus has other university glasshouses: the teaching greenhouses of another faculty, the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, stand a few dozen metres away and should not be confused with those of the garden.

According to the garden, its greenhouses hold one of the most comprehensive collections of useful tropical and subtropical plants in the Czech Republic, perhaps in Europe, with close to 2,000 species. They are grouped by use: plants eaten directly (fruit, vegetables, legumes, root and tuber crops), stimulants, spices, medicinal and aromatic plants, cereals, textile and technical crops, and ornamentals. Among them are banana plants, mango trees, pineapples, passion flowers, papayas, vanilla, cacao, coffee, cinnamon and pepper plants.

The national citrus collection, founded in 1974 by Professor Pospíšil, comprises in its official part 164 subtropical and tropical woody plants of the genus Citrus, alongside a working collection of about 50 further citrus species. The citrus can be seen all year round in the subtropical and tropical houses.

The garden lies on the campus of the Czech University of Agriculture in Suchdol, in the Prague 6 district. The tropical and subtropical houses are open to the public on weekdays during the garden's opening hours, and the citrus collection can be seen in every season. Guided programmes take school groups through both houses to discover banana, vanilla, cinnamon, cacao, citrus and babaco. The garden also takes part in Botanic Gardens Day (Den botanických zahrad), with open days. Prague has other glasshouses described in this atlas, including those of the Charles University botanical garden at Na Slupi and Fata Morgana in Troja.