Two new greenhouses at Meise Botanic Garden

Meise Botanic Garden has recently completed the renovation and refurbishment of its last two glasshouses: the Mediterranean glasshouse and the Cloud Forest. These two new glasshouses complement the thirteen others in the Plant Palace, covering almost one hectare in area and offering a wide variety of ecosystems, from tropical rainforests to deserts, savannahs and mangroves. 

The Cloud Forest glasshouse features a 7-metre-high artificial rock from which several waterfalls flow. Cloud forests are high-altitude forests found on various continents in tropical mountains at an altitude of about 2500 metres. The plants in this glasshouse have been grouped by continent and include a wide variety of trees and epiphytes, as well as many carnivorous plants, fuchsias, ferns and orchids. Most of the plants collect the water they need mainly from the mist.

The Mediterranean glasshouse has terraces made of yellow limestone from Burgundy and has an aquatic element, with a fountain stone recovered from the garden's previous site in Brussels. Mediterranean plants are found around the Mediterranean, but also in California, Chile, South Africa, Australia and the Canary Islands. To survive the summer heat, these plants have developed strategies to avoid drying out, such as hard leaves covered with wax or hairs to slow down evaporation, a cuticle to retain water, etc. Mediterranean plants are generally well adapted to mild, relatively wet winters and dry, hot summers. 

"With the planting of the Mediterranean and Cloud Forest greenhouses, the landscaping of the 13 glasshouses in the Plant Palace  is finally complete," explains Marc Reynders, scientific manager of the collections under glass. “It is the culmination of two decades of teamwork in the Botanic garden that we can look back on with great pride.”

To finance the renovation of these two greenhouses, Botanic Garden Meise was able to count on grants from Toerisme Vlaanderen as part of the project Botanic Garden Meise 2.0.

Visitors will be able to enjoy the Mediterranean fragrances and tropical mists of the cloud forests in the new greenhouses from 1 April.