Exhibition Greenhouse, Shanghai Botanical Garden (上海植物园展览温室)

The Shanghai Botanical Garden grew out of the Longhua Nursery (龙华苗圃), set up in 1954 in the south-west of the city, in what is now Xuhui District. Turned into a botanical garden in 1974, it officially opened to the public in April 1978 and now covers 81.86 hectares, about twelve kilometres from the city centre. Themed gardens followed one another: bamboo and penjing from 1978, peonies in 1980, magnolias in 1988, then a penjing museum in 1995.

The large exhibition greenhouse (展览温室) completed the ensemble at the turn of the century. Opened to the public in October 2001, it gave the garden a vast covered space of some 5,000 m² devoted to tropical and subtropical floras from around the world.

In 2021, twenty years after it opened, the garden surveyed the public on how its exhibition spaces worked and on future directions for their displays, with a view to developing what the greenhouse complex offers.

The greenhouse is a single large volume of many sloping planes, clad entirely in glass curtain walls. Its pyramid-like, tower-shaped outline rises to 32 metres over a footprint of about 5,000 m².

Inside, the topography is entirely man-made: mountains, gorges and waterfalls form the setting of a rainforest. A high-level viewing gallery, served by a lift, gives views down into the canopy. On either side of the main volume, towers house temporary exhibition rooms that complement the permanent planting.

The greenhouse displays more than 3,500 species of tropical and subtropical plants from around the world. They are divided between two main themes: the tropical rainforest, whose landscape of mountains, canyons and waterfalls recreates its appearance closely, and the indoor garden. The side towers host temporary exhibitions that refresh the offer through the year.

The botanical garden also has other collections under cover, notably a pavilion of xerophytic plants and an orchid house with more than 300 species. Its outdoor gardens include collections of conifers (280 species and varieties), bamboos (74 species), peonies (120 cultivars) and magnolias (40 species).

The greenhouse stands in the Shanghai Botanical Garden, at 1111 Longwu Road (龙吴路) in Xuhui District, about twelve kilometres south-west of the city centre. Allow around an hour to walk through it and go up to the viewing gallery.

The garden deserves half a day: the penjing garden, created in 1978 on 4 hectares and home to a museum since 1995, can be enjoyed all year, while spring shows off the magnolia and peony collections. Greenhouse lovers can round off the discovery with the more recent Chenshan Botanical Garden, west of the city, which also has large glasshouses.