~ Arboretum Härle, 06.07.2025 ~

The Arboretum Härle is a large garden/park area in Oberkassel, a district of Bonn. It's owned and maintained by a foundation and the area is semi-public—it's only open on certain dates throughout the year. It's not rare for it to be open but the dates are a little erratic, so they're easy to miss.

The garden started out as the, well, garden of a wealthy entrepreneuer in the 19th century. His erstwhile Gothic Revival mansion was reduced to a simplistic modernist building at some point, and the rent of this building helps fund the foundation.
This part of the garden was inspired by English landscape gardens, and it follows the trend at the time of planting it with somewhat exotic imported tree species essentially as a status symbol for the expensive involved in procuring them.

The foundation was created by the daughters of the family, one of whom planned the newer section of the garden across the street. The large area is split into different areas; the first is a picturesque path planted with all kinds of bright and yellow plants and seemingly terminating in a pleasantly-massed group of trees (but it actually continues below them).

Beside the yellow path are smaller sections planted with various flowers or forming small rooms shaded by trees and large shrubs. The tour guide had a lot to expound upon the intentions and practical challenges of the arrangements, necessary changes, bureaucratic hurdles, and so on, which I sadly cannot all reproduce here. It was very interesting, however.

There is a rose garden, at the time of my visit no longer in bloom, around the corner.

The park extends far beyond, and not all isn open to the public. Adjacent to the obvious garden part are a hill with an orchard and opposite of it a large pond (diminished in recent years because of a highway cutting off the flow of water from the nearby hills).

There was much to see and much to learn. It's well worth a visit, if not multiple to see the different seasons and have time to properly explore this large and intricate, and truly beautiful space.