Institut Redouté-Peiffer

Last post coming from almost two months ago - I can't be more ashamed. I was really set on posting every two weeks, I swear, but then one day, when I turned my computer on, it expelled a little line of smoke and started smelling of burnt plastic, so I instantly turned it off. Then there was delay in getting it to repair-shop, then waiting time for parts coming from other side of the globe, then picking it up... and here we are. Halfway through the summer and the blog is close to dead. Enough with the excuses though, let's go to the topic.

One day I saw a poster on our entrance door, inviting to visit the Institut Redouté-Peiffer. It instantly rang a bell, and indeed, in the Secret Brussels book the place is mentioned as a nice spot (yet again that book!). It's also placed next door to our home, so no excuse to skip it.

Institut Redouté-Peiffer is a horticulture school, and on the open days they were supposed to have a plant market. As we needed to vamp-up our balcony, we packed up and headed to do some shopping.

A little bit of history (mostly from Wikipedia page, so nothing fancy). In 1913 representation of (not existing anymore) Province de Brabant opened a gardening school in Anderlecht. Originally set in Neerpede (picture found on the ReflexCity website).

It was named after a Belgian florist and painter, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, a court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette. He was at the time well known for his watercolour paintings of flowers.

Serge Peiffer was an alumnus of the institute. I didn't find much information on him (not that I looked hard either), but looks like he opened his own institute at a time, and in 1995 they both were merged into what we have today.

The school doesn't look like anything very interesting from the outside, so I don't think there are many people knowing what it hides inside.

Even though we came there on open doors day, we were told by very nice stuff, that you can come to visit anytime (but it's better to call in advance, to see if there's anyone to open the door for you).

Plant market is available only occasionally though. We were helped by a very professional man, who recommended exactly what kind of plants we can take for our balcony, helped us to gather it all up, and also exchange some words about the whole big idea of banning non-registered seeds. 

Inside the building not only you can see several glasshouses where students learn about plants and taking care of them. There's a whole separate part devoted to recreation of the tropical conditions. It looks absolutely stunning! 

All the plants are beautiful and smell is overwhelming. There's even a bench to relax on, maybe read a book, and feel like you're on tropical holidays.

Initially it didn't seem like there is much to see outside, but luckily I dragged Chris in one of the alleys (just to make sure), and it turned out there's a whole big garden worth visiting.

 

For such a small place, we were amazed to see how much time you can spend wandering around in there. Vibrating colours, and as before, overwhelming smell of flowers (even lacking the tropical temperature) make this place feel magical. All you miss is some queen playing croquet with a flamingo.

It was really difficult for me to leave this place, but Belgian weather never disappoints, and we were thrown out by the rain starting to fall on our heads. Fortunately, we have a piece of that place growing on our balcony now.