Botanischer Garten Universität Rostock, University botanical garden in Rostock, Germany

The Botanischer Garten Universität Rostock is a garden spanning around 7.8 hectares and holding over 10,000 plant species. It is organized into separate sections including alpine areas, tree collections, dune environments, and arranged planting beds.

Several attempts to establish a botanical garden at the University of Rostock failed before Karl Ritter von Goebel set up a permanent one in 1885. The original site on Doberaner Straße could not be expanded, so the 7.8-hectare grounds at Hamburger Straße in the Hansaviertel were laid out between 1935 and 1939 by Arno Lehmann and Erich Rulsch. The old greenhouses there stayed in use until 2009, when the new Loki-Schmidt-Gewächshäuser opened on the Hamburger Straße site.

The garden hosts the Plattdeutscher Büchertag, a Low German book day, among its regular guided tours and events. The volunteer group Freundeskreis Botanischer Garten in Rostock organises lectures, exhibitions, practical demonstrations and excursions to similar gardens, and received an honorary award from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern heritage association in 2022. In the Japan garden stands a Low German house with a thatched reed roof.

The garden is open daily except Monday during the warmer months, and from December to February it has reduced opening hours. The site lies along Hans-Sachs Allee next to the university sports fields in the Hansaviertel. The Kayenmühlengraben, a dammed stream, runs through the grounds and shows wet biotopes such as wet meadow, bog, pond and brook.

The systematic garden displays around 340 plant species in 48 uniform beds of 8 square meters each, organized according to how plants are related to one another. This arrangement visually demonstrates the evolutionary connections between different plant groups.