Forstbotanischer Garten Köln, Botanical garden in Rodenkirchen district, Cologne, Germany.

The Cologne Forest Botanical Garden is an arboretum and botanical garden located within the green belt surrounding the city. It features several themed zones containing trees and shrubs from around the world.

The garden was built from autumn 1962 and opened to Cologne's public in 1964, on ground that had belonged to Cologne's outer fortress ring until the end of World War I; the fortification ruins were worked into the plantings as a rock garden. It was laid out under the direction of the then independent municipality of Rodenkirchen, whose high trade-tax revenue from local industry paid for the unusually wide range of species. The foresters Herbert Aden and Wilhelm Mense, with city official Hans Berge, drove the project as a wooded recreation area for Cologne's sparsely forested south. In the 1980s the adjoining Friedenswald was added.

The garden's name refers to its forestry-botanical purpose, and its plantings are grouped by origin: a rhododendron ravine, a heather garden, peonies, a Japanese section with Acer palmatum, Cercidiphyllum and bamboo, and a 1.5-hectare North American section with Sequoiadendron giganteum, Pinus ponderosa and Abies concolor. The adjoining Friedenswald, added in the 1980s, holds trees and shrubs from every nation with which Germany has diplomatic relations.

The fenced core area of about 25 hectares is open during the day and free of charge; the gates close at night. The main car park sits at the eastern end of the park on Zum Forstbotanischen Garten. The garden lies in the southeast corner of the Köln-Süd motorway junction, bounded by Friedrich-Ebert-Straße, Bonner Landstraße and Schillingsrotter Weg.

The Friedenswald, a 20-hectare adjoining area laid out in the 1980s, holds a large meadow ringed by deciduous and coniferous forest. Its trees and shrubs come from every nation with which Germany has diplomatic relations, with tropical and subtropical countries represented by symbolic trees rather than species that could not survive the Cologne climate.