Tropical Greenhouses of the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden

Nancy's first botanical garden was founded in 1758 on rue Sainte-Catherine. In the twentieth century the institution spread out: a high-altitude garden, Haut-Chitelet, was laid out in the Vosges in 1966, and a large new garden was created on the Montet estate in Villers-lès-Nancy and opened in 1975. From 1976 the City of Nancy and the university pooled their resources to run the whole.

The Montet tropical greenhouses were the result of more than one building campaign. Nancy's municipal archives hold a file on the construction of a Palmarium greenhouse, dated 1978 to 1989 and containing twenty-eight plans, followed by a second file from 1991 on the construction of a collections greenhouse, with its specifications and seven plans. The sources consulted do not name the designer of these buildings.

In 1993 the historic garden on rue Sainte-Catherine returned to the municipality and was renamed the Dominique-Alexandre Godron garden; three years later the Conservatoire et Jardins botaniques de Nancy brought together the Montet and Haut-Chitelet. The Montet received the 'Jardin remarquable' label in 2004, followed in 2005 by a timber-and-glass visitor pavilion designed by the architect Christophe Presle.

On 1 April 2016 the institution became the Botanical Gardens of Greater Nancy and the University of Lorraine, and the Montet site was renamed the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden in honour of the botanist (1933-2015). A ceremony marked the new name on 23 April 2016.

The tropical greenhouses form a single building that links a temporary exhibition hall with seven large houses, covering 2,500 m² in all. Rather than a simple geographical inventory, visitors follow a sequence of themes: the palm house, which also shelters threatened plants, the vegetation of arid habitats, humid tropical forest, plants used by people, aquatic plants and epiphytes, a liana gallery, relationships between plants and animals and, last of all, carnivorous plants.

The complex took shape in stages: the archive file on the Palmarium greenhouse spans the years 1978 to 1989, while the one on the collections greenhouse dates from 1991. The sources consulted give neither the height of the houses, nor their materials, nor the name of their architect.

The garden has one other notable building, the timber-and-glass visitor pavilion completed in 2005 to designs by Christophe Presle. The estate also keeps a reminder of its past as a private property, the Sainte-Valérie chapel, built between 1868 and 1888 on the initiative of Baron Seillère, then owner of the Château du Montet, and restored from 2015 to 2017.

The Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden holds more than 12,000 species, divided between outdoor collections, covering 25 hectares according to the metropolitan authority, and the 2,500 m² of tropical greenhouses.

Five of the garden's collections are approved by the CCVS, the French body that accredits specialist plant collections: tropical aroids (900 accessions, or 550 species), tropical ferns (300 accessions, 250 species), myrmecophilous plants, which live in association with ants (170 accessions, 150 species), carnivorous plants (more than 700 accessions, 550 species) and cultivars raised by Lorraine nurserymen (393 accessions, 356 cultivars).

The institution's heritage goes beyond living plants: the Botanical Gardens of Greater Nancy and the University of Lorraine keep more than 300,000 herbarium sheets, mostly assembled by Lorraine botanists since the seventeenth century, a seed bank of 25,000 packets, more than 10,000 books and periodicals, and collections from the former Agricultural and Colonial Institute of Nancy (1902-1938).

The greenhouses are part of the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden, at 100 rue du Jardin-Botanique in Villers-lès-Nancy, a site that extends into neighbouring Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy. Half a day allows time for the seven houses and some of the outdoor collections, which have held the 'Jardin remarquable' label since 2004.

The greenhouses make a warm refuge in winter, while the summer months invite a longer walk through the grounds, where the Sainte-Valérie chapel also stands. The visit can be extended to the institution's two other sites: the Dominique-Alexandre Godron garden on rue Sainte-Catherine in Nancy, heir to the botanical garden of 1758, and the Haut-Chitelet high-altitude garden at Xonrupt-Longemer in the Vosges.