It is located at Am Botanischen Garten 1, Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and open daily.

Kiel's Alter Botanischer Garten (Old Botanical Garden), which still exists, began in 1825 as a private park, was acquired by the University of Kiel in 1868, and from 1878-1884 was refashioned by botanist Adolf Engler as a botanical garden.

It ultimately proved too small, and from 1975-1978 the university created a new botanical garden on its campus, which opened to the public in 1985.

Today this newer garden contains 14,000 plant species in a variety of outdoor settings and greenhouses.

Its herbarium contains about 120,000 specimens of all plant families, with good collections of algae, lichens, fungi, slime mold, mosses, and ferns.