Bolestraszyce Arboretum

The arboretum occupies the grounds of a manor at Bolestraszyce together with one of the earthwork forts of the Przemysl fortress ring, and the combination is the character of the place: glacis, ramparts and a brick-lined ditch planted as a garden, with the earthwork giving shelter and a range of aspects that ordinary flat ground does not. It was founded in 1975 on land connected with Piotr Michalowski, a nineteenth-century painter whose family held the estate, and it now runs to about three hundred hectares with several thousand taxa. Its recognised speciality is willows: the national collection of Salix is here, several hundred forms of it, kept partly for basketry and biomass research, and there is serious work on threatened Polish flora alongside. There are ponds, an orangery, a collection of Carpathian trees and a garden of dye and fibre plants; it is a working research institution that admits visitors rather than a show garden.

What you actually see

• A fort as a garden - ramparts, glacis and a brick ditch of the Przemysl ring, planted.
• The national willow collection - several hundred forms of Salix.
• Three hundred hectares - ponds, orangery and Carpathian trees among several thousand taxa.
• Conservation work - threatened Polish flora grown and studied on site.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is a research institution first and the labelling assumes some botanical interest. Not all of the three hundred hectares is developed garden. Opening hours are seasonal and shorter outside summer. Paths on the earthwork can be muddy.

Nearby

Przemysl and the rest of its fortress ring are a few kilometres west.