Born of a passion for gardening and a climate that enables daring planting, the ‘Jardins Remarquable’ (remarkable gardens: a qualification that denotes gardens and parks of special interest) of the Côte d'Azur have become a reflection of global biodiversity. Take a guided tour for a bowl of fresh autumn air…
The garden of Château de la Napoule in Mandelieu
© Ville de Mandelieu
When you see the towers of the Chateau of La Napoule rise above the sea, it is hard to believe that the castle is not an original. It was dreamed up by Americans Mary and Henry Clews, she an architect and landscape designer, he a sculptor. They devoted 17 years to transforming the former ruins of a fortress into a neo-medieval castle. Alongside it Mary created an artist's garden with stunning panoramas, intriguing perspectives and cosy secret corners punctuated with quirky and wonderful sculptures.
Parc Phoenix in Nice: an oasis for families
© City of Nice
The name for Phoenix Park is inspired by the "Phoenix canariensis", the date palm of the Canary Islands. Here it really sets the tone, with a predominantly Mediterranean flavour. This green lung of seven hectares is also a home to a treasury of the tropics. A huge, 25 meters high greenhouse recreates tropical and subtropical climates! Perfect for a family visit, this is also an animal park with more than 2,000 animals of 70 species including lemurs, wallabies and kookaburras.
Exotic garden in Èze
© Efesenko /iStockphoto
In the exotic garden of Èze, at the foot of the ruins of the medieval castle, you will discover elements of the tropics and the desert. In the southern zone, succulents and agave plants such as aloe vera take centre stage whilst on the northern side, there are Mediterranean species that love the humidity in a beautiful shaded garden with waterfalls and pools that look like mirrors reflecting the blue sky. Everywhere you look you’ll see a sublime panorama - at 429 meters above sea level, the view stretches from Italy to Saint-Tropez.
Val Rahmeh: a garden of memories in Menton
© CRT Riviera Côte d'Azur - Cindy Joigny
The last owner, an English aristocrat, adored the plant variety daturas, also known as devil’s trumpets. In Menton, their heady scent hangs over the garden of Val Rahmeh, an extension of the Museum of Natural History. Of the 1700 species from around the world that flourish here, more than a hundred are rare or a protected species. The centrepiece of this extraordinary garden is the Sophora toromiro, a native shrub of Easter Island which no longer grows there.
The botanic garden of the Villa Thuret in Antibes
Writer George Sand said that the garden at Thuret was "the most beautiful" she had ever seen. Under the guardianship of the National Institute of Agricultural Research, it is very much a collector's garden with 1600 different species of trees and shrubs and a gorgeous water garden. Visitors can follow a course which identifies exceptional specimens such as a glorious 150-year-old Eucalyptus dorrigoensis tree.
- Français: Télécharger la plaquette
- English: Download the garden leaflet
- Italiano: Scarica la brochure del giardino
- Map/Plan: Download
Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in St Jean Cap Ferrat
© Caesa Pics Production
A garden hidden within a garden… At Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat the gardens are the living legacy of Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild. Here you’ll find a French garden alongside a Japanese garden reached via a rose garden. Aesthetic to the point of pickiness, the Baroness instructed employees to dress up as trees, flowerbeds or ponds, so that she could more easily visualise and design the landscape. The most unusual aspect here is the stone garden with its collection of bas reliefs from the middle ages, gargoyles and statues that seem to come straight out of a fairy tale.
Hanbury Giardini near Menton
© Mechrefite / Flickr
The Giardini Botanici Hanbury, also known as Villa Hanbury, are major botanical gardens operated by the University of Genoa. They are located at Corso Montecarlo 43, Mortola Inferiore, several kilometers west of Ventimiglia, Italy, very close to the french border and the town of Menton. The gardens were established by Sir Thomas Hanbury on a small, steep peninsula jutting southwards from an altitude of 103 meters down into the Mediterranean Sea. He purchased the extant Palazzo Orengo property in 1867, and over decades created the garden with the aid of pharmacologist Daniel Hanbury (his brother), the botanist and landscape designer Ludwig Winter, and scientists including Gustav Cronemayer, Kurt Dinter, and Alwin Berger. In 1912 the Hortus Mortolensis, the catalogue of the garden, contained 5800 species, although the garden itself had more. Hanbury died in 1907, but energetic plantings and improvements resumed after World War I under the direction of his daughter-in-law Lady Dorothy Hanbury.
Exotic Garden of Monaco
© Tomsickova Tatyana / Shutterstock
This “extraordinary garden” brings together thousands of so-called “succulent” plant species. It was inaugurated in 1933 and boldly established on the side of the rock, where it has flourished, now drawing admiration from all over the world. It is a kingdom showcasing the exuberance, strangeness and surrealism of nature. Sixty metres under the ground, a prehistoric cave unveils its spectacular lime formations, formed over millennia. Spread over an area of approximately 15,000 square meters, the Exotic Garden is home to a thousand cacti and other succulent plants with stems or hypertrophic leaves which store water. Originally from the planet’s main semi-arid regions, these plants still produce plenty of flowers. The principal flowering seasons are winter (January–February) for South African succulents such as Aloe and Crassula, and spring and summer for cacti, a family native to the American continent. The enormous trees which line the paths of the Exotic Garden illustrate the age of the collection which served as the basis for the creation of the garden at the instigation of Prince Albert I. Opened to the public in February 1933, and supplemented in the 1960s by a botanical centre and specialist tree nursery, the garden is one of the Principality’s most visited tourist attractions.
Villa Boccanegra near Menton
© Financial Times
The locality of Boccanegra is known for the presence of cultures in the middle of the 16th century. The property had two large pre-existing olive groves, one in the West and the other in the Levant. Interspersed with a very steep and rocky area and scrubland, it is now planted with exotic species ending with a hedge of eucalyptus over the railroad. Boccanegra is associated with the plant collector Ellen Willmott who purchased the house in 1905.
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