National Botanic Garden of Israel

National Botanic Garden of Israel (official name: The Botanical Garden for the Native Plants of Israel in memory of Montague Lamport, in Hebrew: הגן הבוטני לצמחי ארץ ישראל ע"ש מונטג'יו למפורט) is a botanic garden located in Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. The garden is dedicated to the plants of Israel.

The entrance

The botanist Alexander Eig established the garden in 1931

The botanic garden was opened in 1931 by Otto Warburg and Alexander Eig. They were the founders of the botanic department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After Mount Scopus was isolated from Israel in 1948, they decided to create a new botanical garden in West Jerusalem, in Givat Ram. The new garden, Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, was opened in 1954.

The National Botanic Garden of Israel is also an archaeological park. It has many Jewish burial caves from the Second Temple period. In the southern part of the garden there is a famous cave called the Tomb of Nicanor. The cave is also burial place of two Zionist activists: Leon Pinsker and Menachem Ussishkin.

Related pages

• List of botanical gardens

Other websites

• National Botanic Garden of Israel Archived 2015-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
• National Botanic Garden of Israel at "Botanic Gardens Conservation International" website