Siebold’s flower garden. Botanical paintings of the Siebold collection

The impact Philipp Franz von Siebold made on the garden fl ora of Europe remains fairly unknown. At the beginning of the 19th century, Siebold returned to the Netherlands from Japan with a collection of 700 (living) plants. He cultivated these specimens in his own garden and planted 30 of them in the Botanic Garden in Leiden, which still features 15 of the original plants today. The introduction of the hydrangea, camellia, Japanese anemone and many other plants into the European garden had become a fact.