Summit plants
What grows at 3,000 metres elsewhere grows here at sea level.
Kongharald — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0
Between about 20 May and 22 July the sun never drops below the horizon in Tromsø — two months of continuous daylight. The counterpart is the polar night between about 27 November and 15 January, when the sun does not rise, so the day is a few hours of dim blue and then darkness. The northern lights are seen in the dark period rather than in summer — roughly September to March. Choose your season by which you want, because you cannot see both on one visit.
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Tromsø's Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden is the northernmost botanical garden in the world: some three hundred and fifty kilometres above the Arctic Circle, growing mountain and polar plants from several continents in the open air. The scientific idea is simple and convincing: plants that live on the summits of central European mountains, or in Tibet, or in the Andes, need a short summer, a long winter and a particular light — and that is exactly what Tromsø provides at sea level. So what grows elsewhere only at three thousand metres grows here in an ordinary garden. The season is compressed and strange: almost nothing until May, then the whole garden flowers at once through June and July under a sun that does not set, so the colour reaches its peak within a few weeks. Entry is **free and around the clock** all year — which makes sense in a place where midnight is lit.
What grows at 3,000 metres elsewhere grows here at sea level.
The whole garden blooms at once in June.
Breivika, 9019 Tromsø