Nellemann's Have

The small town of Sæby has one seriously impressive collection of paradise apple trees, part of a lovely garden called Nelleman’s Have. Like a lot of landscaped areas in northern Denmark, this orchard and lush cultivated flower garden abuts a wilder forested area, which is also open to any and all visitors who feel like taking a stroll in the woods.

Founded in 1925 by a local land inspector and aspiring fruit farmer Nicolai Nellemann, the late apple enthusiast’s eponymous garden is said to contain somewhere between 200 and 300 varietals of paradise apples. After Nicolai Nellemann died in 1976, his son Ib kept improving the garden and grew the orchard to about 1,000 trees of about 400 varietals until his own death in 1991.

After Ib Nellemann’s death, the estate was neglected and became quite run down due to a lack of general upkeep and care. But locals knew they had something special in their midst that just needed a bit of attention to flourish once again. In 2008, a group formed to keep the lovely garden free and open to the public, and to keep cultivating the trees and improve a few features around the garden. Most notable as of 2019, there are several nice flat trails for walking about and an open-air, covered building to enjoy a packed lunch or snag some shade along the easily navigable paths among the trees.