Hungary's first botanical garden was started in 1771 at the University of Nagyszombat (today: Trnava, Slovakia), which itself was founded by Cardinal Peter Pázmány in 1635. Thanks to the diligence of its creator, Jakab Winterl, and that of his student, the renowned scientist-polyhistor Pál Kitaibel, the collection soon achieved universal fame.

After several translocations, the garden arrived at its present site more than 150 years ago. Hidden in the typical urban environment of Budapest today, it once was a country estate of the aristocratic Festetics family. The mansion, which is the central building of the garden, was erected by the famous architect of the day, Mihály Pollack, in 1802. Today, it houses a library of ancient botanical and horticultural works, documents from the history of the garden, a herbarium of some 40,000 sheets representing both indigenous and exotic species, and provides a venue for academic lectures and popular science programmers.

The monuments of the garden include memorial columns erected in the late 1800s to the authors of the first "Hungarian Herbal" Sámuel Diószegi and Mihály Fazekas, the memorial to honor one of its great patrons, Palatine József, who arranged its relocation to the present location, as well as the bust of the world famous natural scientist of the Carpathians, Pál Kitaibel.

A national conservation area since 1960, the botanical garden displays some 7,000 plant species and varieties. The historic building of the palmary from 1865 and the greenhouse, which was renovated in 1984, are home to the tropical and subtropical species of the collection. There is an impressive variety of cacti, bromeliads, orchids, palms and arums.

The so called Victoria House was specifically built for a tropical curiosity, the Amazonian water-lily, in 1893. Another special treasure of the garden is the arboretum; although it occupies but a small area it still has some 800 tree and shrub species to present to the visitor. The rockeries offer a glimpse at the floral biodiversity of Europe's alpine regions. Hungary is represented by more than 400 indigenous plant species.

The garden has been immortalized as one of the scenes in Ferenc Molnár's great children's book "The Boys of Pal Street". By the early 20th century, it had been engulfed by the ever growing city, and hospital buildings occupied two thirds of its original area of 10 hectares.

Celebrating the 235th anniversary of its foundation, the University Botanical Garden is now devoted more than ever to fulfilling its traditional role in a modern environment: to teach the diversity of plant life to students of all levels, serve as a living museum and a haven for endangered plant species from Hungary and the whole world, educate the public, further the cause of environmentalism and survive as a "green island" in a concrete jungle, where the little ones can have their first encounter with nature at its most colorful and those in the autumn of life can find peace and harmony.