Trauttmansdorff Castle Gardens Entrance Ticket 2018

On the sun-kissed southern slopes of Merano’s botanical Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle, you’ll find a themed garden that really captures the feel of the Mediterranean. Walking paths meander through the Sun Gardens, leading up the hill and offering spectacular views of the surrounding Alps. Fragrant dwarf shrubs alternate with evergreen woody plants. Cork and holm oaks evoke the original landscapes of the Mediterranean region. Below the castle, Italy’s northernmost olive grove thrives: here, the gnarled silhouette of a 700-year-old specimen makes quite an impression. In the summer, thousands of sunflowers bloom. Pines and cypresses flank old crop plants such as pomegranate, grape, mulberry and fig trees. There are also succulents from Mediterranean semideserts such as cacti, Euphorbia, aloes and agaves.

The Forests of the World area is located on the north side of Trauttmansdorff Castle. These leafy woods offer a shady refuge, especially in summer. A wide variety of deciduous and coniferous woods from North and South America and East Asia add a touch of the exotic. The primordial Fern Glen, replete with streams and waterfalls, is refreshingly cool. In addition to the natural landscapes, there are also crop plants from the Americas, as well as an Asian rice paddy and tea plantation – representing important cultivated landscapes from faraway lands. Trauttmansdorff’s Forests of the World area also features special plantcollections that set it awash in colour: ornamental cherry trees begin their parade of blossoms in April, immediately followed by the lush flowering of over 300 species and varieties of rhododendron.

The Water and Terraced Gardens area is graced by stairways and water features that connect various levels, where there are interesting elements of European landscape architecture: spherically manicured boxwood, geometric plantings, and a maze evoke the Italian Renaissance garden. In the English Perennial Garden, the plant beds are also geometrically shaped, but are not laid out in rigid patterns. You can smell and touch aromatic plants in the raised beds of the Sense Garden: the intense fragrance of English roses, Lilium regale and star jasmine permeate the air. At the foot of the terraces is the romantic Water Lily Pond. A dense planting of irises, daylilies and grasses encircles brightly coloured water lilies. Flawless lotus flowers rise up out of the water and a dense palm forest fringes the shore; in the spring, camellias and azaleas bloom amidst more than 200 hemp palms.

The Landscapes of South Tyrol area of the Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle is set up along a man-made waterway: a mountain stream lined by green alderfollows an alluvial forest with alders and willows then merges into lakeside vegetation with reeds and cattails.