A Guide to visiting Trsteno Arboretum, Croatia

Ahead of visiting Croatia, we’d seen photos in a guide book of a gorgeous leafy garden with incredible views out over the Adriatic sea. So of course we had to fit it in to our itinerary and see it for ourselves! Given it is just 20 miles outside of Dubrovnik, we decided to use one of our days there to explore this wonderful place.

How to getto Trsteno Arboretum

If you’re coming from Dubrovnik Old Town, you can reach Trsteno in 3 ways:

• Hire a car and drive – there’s plenty of parking at Trsteno Arboretum and it’ll take you about 30 minutes to drive
• Get a taxi – the most expensive option, costing around EUR45 each way
• Take the bus – this is the option we chose, but unfortunately it’s not totally simple. If you’re in the Old Town you have to take the bus from Pile Gate to the main Dubrovnik Bus Station – this can be done via bus 1A or 1B and takes roughly 15 minutes. From the main bus station you can then take bus 12, 15 or 35 to Trsteno. They don’t run super regularly, so check the timetables in advance. The bus takes around 45 minutes and in total this will cost around EUR10 per person.

Note: If you take the bus, the timetables coming back are hard to decipher because the bus routes show only start and end destination times, not stop times along the way. This is fine on the way as Dubrovnik is the start of the line, but coming back Trsteno isn’t – so be sure to ask at the bus station for return stop times.

About Trsteno Arboretum

The Garden was founded by Ivan Gučetić in 1494, and his descendants maintained the garden throughout the centuries. During the 15-1600s, the owners would pay sailors and others travelling the world to bring back seeds for them to plant in the garden and expand it.

Post WW2 when Croatia became part of Yugoslavia, the land was eventually taken over by the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences & Arts, which turned it into a public arboretum. It’s been open to the public ever since. During the Croatian war of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991-95, the house and gardens suffered severe damage, and then further damage was caused in 2000 when a forest fire swept through the area. Luckily today it’s recovered and is a beautiful place to explore.

The garden has a Renaissance layout, with a set of geometric shapes formed with plants such as lavender, rosemary, fuchsia and bougainvillea, all set around a 14th century stone villa with a cliff-edge pavilion in front of it. In fact, this pavilion and surrounding area was used as the setting for the gardens of The Red Keep in Game of Thrones.

The gardens also house a small chapel, a nice picnic area, and it’s most fancy feature – a beautiful pond overlooked by a statue of Neptune and filled with white waterlilies and dozens of bullfrogs and goldfish. We even saw a terrapin in it. The gardens in totality are only partially landscaped – quite a bit of it is wonderfully wild.

Other things to do in Trsteno

There are a few other things to do in Trsteno besides the Arboretum if you want to make a full day of it.

Firstly, you can’t possibly miss the tree nominated for European Tree of the Year (HA – of course my Mum knew about this!), which sits just outside the Arboretum. It’s over 500 years old and one of the largest of its kind on the continent.

There’s also a lovely little church just across the road which offers yet more wonderful views out to the sea.

However, the best additional thing to do is to walk down to Trsteno beach. It takes around 10-15 minutes from the Arboretum but brings you out at a really quiet rocky beach right on the coastline. There are no food or drink shops, but you can sit or swim in total peace before heading back to Dubrovnik.