Discover Helsinki’s green spaces: from parks to plates

Helsinki is an archipelago city strung with hundreds of islands, scattered with swimming spots, seafront bars and sailing harbours. It is also a sanctuary of greenery: planted gardens, tree-shaded lakesides and ancient woodlands bristling with wild berries and herbs. Whether greeting the city under the linden canopies of its grand Esplanade Park, ambling past thickets of Japanese roses on the sea cliffs, or resting for coffee amongst the bulrushes and birdlife of Töölö Bay, Helsinki is awash with greens in every hue. Here are our favourite green spaces in the city and beyond.

Elm Restaurant

On summer days, when the sun barely scoops below the horizon, those in the know settle themselves at Elm, whose elegant veranda all but melts into the neighbouring Kaivopuisto, the city’s oldest park, on the southeast shore. Elm is the brainchild of the team behind Nolla – Helsinki’s acclaimed, zero-waste restaurant – and embodies the Mediterranean backgrounds of its chef-owners, brought to life within the renovated living room, library and courtyard of a 19th-century villa. The Helsinki restaurant’s signature plates of spaghetti puttanesca, chilled almond soup and grilled fish are best enjoyed on a terrace fringed with geraniums, potted herbs and lilac.
www.restaurantelm.fi/

Studio Kukkapuro

On the outskirts of Helsinki, the small town of Kauniainen unfolds as a smattering of wooden houses amongst tall stands of fir, birch and linden, with the occasional glint of a lake beyond. At the end of one narrow lane, this familiar scene gives way to the surprising sweep of a concrete roof floating within a canopy of trees.

Studio Kukkapuro is the home and ‘Atelje’ of iconic Finnish chair designer Yrjö Kukkapuro and his artist wife, Irmeli Kukkapuro. Designed by Yrjö and Eero Paloheimo and built between 1968-9, the single-room studio is a ‘hyperbolic paraboloid’ (a swollen triangle) that is fluid in function and permeable to the outdoors. Looped by a lattice of glass, the ever-shifting tints of light, moods of weather, and dances of the woodland beyond ensure Studio Kukkapuro doesn’t simply testify to radical invention but remains a continual wellspring for the imagination.
www.studiokukkapuro.com

Ahlberg

In the years following Finnish independence, Arthur and Edith Ahlberg would drive their horse-drawn cart from Malmi to the Helsinki Market Square, laden with produce. Two generations on (and counting), husband and wife Kaijus Ahlberg and Minna Tengvall continue to run the Ahlberg family farm, now situated in Sipoo Östersundom, just beyond the city.

With their organic, sustainably grown produce, Ahlberg supplies an enviable role-call of the region’s best restaurants, markets, and grocers—relishing seasonal orders of rhubarb, new potatoes, pumpkins, and romaine lettuces, alongside delicacies the likes of shiso leaf, purple sage, and zucchini flowers. For the farm shop-inclined, Ahlberg’s bursting greenhouses of edible flowers and micro herbs are as bright and fragrant a promise one could wish for.
www.ahlberginpuutarha.fi

Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden

Whether under the snow of mid-winter or peak summer sun, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden has coaxed visitors into the shelter of its 10 majestic greenhouses since their arrival, transplanted from the city of Turku in 1829. Yet these are far from mere protection from the outdoors: they offer a botanical quest stretching from the arid slopes of the Mediterranean to the savanna, beaches and mountain streams of Africa, through tropical wetlands and rainforests, even as far as the Cape Floral Kingdom.

Beyond, the six-hectare grounds of Kumpula Manor wend paths through its historic arboretum; lichen and medicinal garden; historic rockery (the first of its kind in Finland, established in 1884); lush rivers of ferns and flamboyant clouds of azaleas.
www.helsinki.fi/garden-collections

Danskarby Green Kitchen

Lakeside villa — Photography: Louise Long

When the young Louise Méru moved to Cape Town from her idyllic childhood home, 30 km from Helsinki, she dreamt one day of returning to make the house once more her own. Two and half decades later, the Finnish chef did just that, restoring the lakeside villa with its 18th-century storehouse and designing her own professional kitchen, set amongst vegetable beds, a greenhouse and a pottery studio. Since 2022, Louise, with her sister Isabella and mother Caje, has hosted a summertime programme of workshops at Danskarby, including oil painting, pottery, forest yoga, and climate-friendly cooking classes such as ‘The South African Kitchen’.
www.danskarby.com/