Hello lovely readers! Eeeeks, it’s finally springtime and most April days have even felt like summer. This year is crazy and I love it so far! I’ve got a new post for my blog’s Berlin guide for you, because I spent my last Saturday at the Botanical Garden with a part of my lovely family. Such a wonderful place!

The Botanical Garden in Berlin is so so beautiful in spring and summer. I had already been there once in winter and the greenhouses were super crowded back then. Now at the end of April with beautiful weather, there were only a few people and we enjoyed lots of space to explore everything.

Discover the Botanical Garden in Berlin

Outside, the flowers were in bloom and everything smelled so good. We took the whole afternoon to explore the gardens and our highlight were the greenhouses. Going there in the warm season instead of during wintertime is also better because you don’t have go take on and off your jacket all the time and can simply enjoy the warm and partly tropical climate.

From cacti over jungle plants to palm trees or roses, you can discover a variety of beautiful plants, read about them, take photos or simply sit on a bench in silence, enjoy a good book and pretend being on holidays. :D We really had fun reading all the botanical names of the plants, were in awe of some of the plants, took some nice portrait shots and simply had a good time. If you happen to be in Berlin and need a nice weekend activity, I can definitely recommend visiting the gardens.

Being at the Botanical Garden each time reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s wonderful modernist short story Kew Gardens in which she precisely describes the surroundings and details of the natural setting. A short quote:
 
 

“FROM THE OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface, and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.”

– Virginia Woolf

 
 
Have a lovely week! :)
Lu