Wojslawice Arboretum

The garden at Wojslawice was begun in 1880 by Fritz von Oheimb, a landowner with a serious interest in plants, who laid out a landscape park and started collecting rhododendron and azalea on a scale that made it known internationally before the war; it passed to Wroclaw University in 1988 and is run as its arboretum. What it holds now are national collections: rhododendron and azalea in the hundreds of cultivars, which flower in May and are what most visitors come for, and separately the largest Polish collections of daylily and Siberian iris, with hundreds of cultivars each flowering through June and July, along with lilac, magnolia, conifers and a systematic collection. The setting is a landscape park of about sixty hectares with ponds, a chapel and mature trees. It is a plant collection rather than a beauty spot and it rewards knowing what you are looking at, though May does not require that.

What you actually see

• An 1880 foundation - a private collection that became internationally known before the war.
• Rhododendron in May - hundreds of cultivars, the reason most visitors come.
• National daylily and iris collections - the largest in Poland, flowering June and July.
• Sixty hectares of park - ponds, mature trees and a chapel around the collections.

When to go

May for rhododendron; June and July for daylilies and irises. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Outside the flowering peaks it is a quiet park with less to see. Entry is charged and opening is seasonal. It is rural and needs a car. Labelling is botanical and in Polish.

Nearby

Niemcza is close; Sleza mountain is north-east.