Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil

Horticulture has deep roots here: in 1761 Louis XV had a botanical garden with glasshouses laid out on the site, which Louis XVI sold in 1778 to Joly de Fleury. The present garden, however, descends from the municipal plant nursery created in the mid-nineteenth century by the engineer Adolphe Alphand at La Muette to supply the new parks and promenades of Paris. When it outgrew that site, the nursery moved in 1895 to the Fonds des Princes at Auteuil.

Jean-Camille Formigé, chief architect of the city's promenades and designer of two palaces at the 1889 World's Fair, laid out the complex between 1895 and 1898. In 1968 the construction of the Boulevard Périphérique and the Auteuil interchange took away about a third of the garden, and plant production moved to Rungis. The site was listed as a historic monument on 1 September 1998 and in the same year joined the Jardin botanique de la Ville de Paris, alongside Bagatelle, the Parc Floral and the Arboretum.

From 2011 a plan to expand the Roland-Garros stadium sparked a long legal battle led by heritage and environmental groups. The courts ultimately upheld the project: technical glasshouses from the 1980s were demolished, while Formigé's historic glasshouses were preserved. In 2019 the semi-sunken Court Simonne-Mathieu opened, framed by new glasshouses designed by Marc Mimram. The garden was awarded the 'Jardin remarquable' label on 8 June 2021.

Formigé arranged the garden in a classical, symmetrical composition around a central parterre lined with glasshouses. Their metal frames, painted in shades of blue and green, make up one of the last large ensembles of the kind built in the nineteenth century. The centrepiece is the palmarium, a large glasshouse whose dome rises to nearly 16 metres without any supporting columns; it is divided into three climate zones. Around it are a palm pavilion and a series of so-called heritage chapels, small glasshouses each devoted to a single collection.

Sculpture is part of the design: fourteen grimacing masks attributed to Rodin's workshop decorate the terrace embankment, a fountain by Jules Dalou carries a bacchanal medallion of 1891, and Sèvres vases complete the decoration. Mimram's glasshouses, totalling about 1,435 m², wrap the tennis court in a façade of 900 glass scales, and each has its own independent climate control.

The garden holds between 5,000 and 6,000 species or specimens. The historic glasshouses shelter palms, ferns, figs, begonias, cacti and New Caledonian plants, as well as orchids and bromeliads, the latter an accredited national collection. Japanese carp swim in the palmarium's pool.

The contemporary glasshouses offer a botanical world tour, one per continent: the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania, with more than a thousand species between them. Outdoors, the garden has several notable trees, among them a ginkgo planted in 1895 and now over 30 metres tall, and a Korean zelkova counted among the finest in Europe. Japanese and Mediterranean gardens complete the route.

The garden lies at the Porte d'Auteuil in the 16th arrondissement, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne and right beside the Roland-Garros stadium. Entry to the garden and glasshouses is free. An hour to an hour and a half is enough for the historic glasshouses, Mimram's houses and the parterre. Access can be restricted during the Roland-Garros tournament and some events at the Parc des Princes, which are best avoided. The visit extends easily into the Bois de Boulogne and on to the Parc de Bagatelle and its rose garden.