Greenhouses of the Versailles-Chèvreloup Arboretum

The Chèvreloup estate was enclosed within the Petit Parc of Versailles in 1685. In 1921 it was allocated to the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, which planned a large botanical garden there as an annex to a Jardin des Plantes in Paris that had become too cramped; the formal decree followed in 1927. The war brought almost all activity to a halt, and in the 1960s the original scheme was replaced by a scientific arboretum.

In 1969, horticultural greenhouses were installed to grow the bedding plants of the Jardin des Plantes. Since the nineteenth century these had been raised on land next to the garden, which was subdivided that year, so production had to move to Chèvreloup. The reception pavilion was built in 1979 and fifty hectares were opened to the public.

In 1985 new greenhouses were built to house the tropical plant collections, which were also too cramped at the Jardin des Plantes. When the whole estate became open to visitors in 2018, these greenhouses stayed outside the free circuit: they open only occasionally, today on guided tours. Some pages (arboretum, City of Paris) mention Mondays or Tuesdays; the 2026 calendar lists Sundays.

Work on a new greenhouse began in May 2024 to show the fuchsia collection, built up since the 1970s with the Société nationale d'horticulture de France and until then hidden from the public. The fuchsia garden and greenhouse were inaugurated on 26 June 2026, for a project costing about 1.3 million euros.

According to the arboretum, the botanical greenhouses of 1985 consist of several glass "chapels" and plastic tunnels that recreate a range of climates, from desert zones to humid mountain rainforests. Outdoors, shade structures shelter some collections in summer, such as the cycads. The arboretum gives 6,000 m² for these tropical greenhouses, while other Museum pages credit 6,000 m² to the two groups of greenhouses together, botanical and horticultural.

The horticultural greenhouses of 1969 cover, according to the arboretum's site, 2,000 m² of glasshouses and plastic tunnels, where a team of six gardeners handles production.

The fuchsia greenhouse, opened in 2026, is the newest and, in the Museum's words, the most modern on the site. Free photographs on Wikimedia Commons show a steel frame and a glazed cover. Covering 400 m² and designed with the architecture firm B2A, the greenhouse builder Deforche Construction Group and the landscape designer Paludes, it has fine climate control: shading, ventilation and misting. A buried 50 m³ tank collects rainwater. It sits in the American zone, beside a 1,000 m² garden.

Depending on the page, the botanical greenhouses hold between 7,000 and 8,000 plants and more than 4,400 species, intended first for research (taxonomy, pharmacology, floral biology, physiology) and for the conservation of species that are often threatened in the wild. The best-represented groups are orchids (634 species on the greenhouse page, over 700 in a 2025 Museum article), pelargoniums (137 species and 288 cultivars with coloured or variegated leaves), aloes (112 species), sabal palms (11 of 16 species), the flora of South Africa (412 species) and that of Madagascar (271 species). Cacti, ferns, selaginellas and cycads are the subjects of themed tours.

The fuchsia collection stands at 53 species and 412 cultivars according to the tropical greenhouses page; the 2026 walk presents more than 1,000 specimens, representing 450 varieties. The greenhouse shows the wild species by origin, from the Andes to New Zealand, and the neighbouring garden the horticultural varieties in order of creation. The horticultural greenhouses supply about 60,000 bedding plants to the Jardin des Plantes.

The botanical and horticultural greenhouses can be seen only on booked guided tours on set dates: the 2026 calendar lists Sundays from September to November, lasting about two hours and open from age eight. Allow about twenty minutes' walk between the reception and these greenhouses, a stretch counted within the tour. The fuchsia greenhouse and garden, by contrast, are covered by the arboretum's entrance ticket and lie about thirty minutes' walk from the entrance. A half day also covers the 200 hectares of trees: Japanese cherries in April, autumn foliage. A few kilometres away, the Orangery of the Palace of Versailles is also in this atlas.