During my holidays I went to the Hortus of Amsterdam, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. The ‘Hortus Medicus’ as it was formerly known, was founded in 1636 as a herb garden for doctors and apothecaries. During the summer they extended their opening hours until the evenings for three days a week and as I was taking intensive yoga classes nearby for a week, I decided to visit it on one of these hot evenings.
Even though there were not a lot of plants flowering, it was definitely worth a visit, for example seeing the huge leaves of the Victoria cruziana (above) was quite breathtaking.
The monumental palmtree house dates from 1912, in it I saw many exotic trees that we normally know as houseplants, except that in the greenhouse of the Hortus they had grown meters high.
Read for more information on wikipedia.
