Linnaean Garden

Rudbeck's own design for the botanical garden (1675)

The Linnaean Garden or Linnaeus' Garden (in Swedish Linnéträdgården) is the oldest of the botanical gardens belonging to Uppsala University. It has been restored and is kept as an 18th century botanical garden, according to the specifications of Carolus Linnaeus.

The garden was originally planned and planted by Olaus Rudbeck, professor of medicine, in 1655. Rudbeck also built the house adjacent to the garden. At the end of the 17th century it had about 1,800 different species, but was damaged in the Uppsala city fire 1702. Linnaeus became responsible for the garden in 1741 and had it rearranged according to his own ideas, documented in his work Hortus Upsaliensis (1748). The conservatory for the garden was designed by the architect Carl Hårleman.

Engraving from 1770 of the garden of Linnaeus

After the gardens of Uppsala Castle had been donated to the university by King Gustav III to serve as a new botanical garden, the old one was left to decay. It was bought by the Swedish Linnaean Society in 1917 and restored according to the detailed description in the Hortus Upsaliensis. The garden was later taken over by the university, while the Linnaean Museum in the house in which Linnaeus has his home is still run by the Society.