Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the City of Geneva

Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the city of Geneva
Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève
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Type	Public Park
Location	Geneva, Switzerland
Coordinates
Area	28 hectares
Opened	1817
Operated by	Ville de Genève
Status	Open
Water	Lake Geneva
Vegetation	Lawns, Non-native traditional gardens
Connecting transport	road, bus, train, air
Landmarks	National Herbarium
Facilities	Information centre, Gift shop, Toilets, Shelter, Cafe and Tea rooms
Website	www.ville-ge.ch/cjb

The Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the city of Geneva (Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève) is a museum and an institution of the City of Geneva.

Establishment and location

It was founded in 1817 in a former area of Bastions Park in 1817 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. It was relocated to its present location in 1904 and occupies an area of 28 hectares (69 acres) adjacent to Lake Geneva and the park of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Collections

The botanical garden includes a living collection of 14,000 species of 249 different families from around the world, and a historical herbarium of nearly 6 million botanical samples. The library of over 220,000 volumes

The living collection is divided into several sections: an arboretum, rock gardens and banks of protected plants, medicinal and useful plants, greenhouses, horticultural plants (including a "garden of scent and touch"). The garden also incorporates a zoo dedicated to conservation and the Botanicum (a family space) near the lake.

National classification

The entire garden, including greenhouses, libraries and collections, and two mansions "Le Chene" and "La Console", is registered as a cultural asset of national importance.

Activities

The institution has a special interest in the medicinal plants of Paraguay, with about 5000 known plants thanks to the legacy of the Guaraní people, preserved by the Jesuit missions and the collections of Emil Hassler. The Paraguayan Ethnobotany Project was established in the mid 1990s in collaboration with the Botanical Garden and Zoo of Asunción. This collaborative framework has facilitated the creation of a large herbarium of Paraguayan medicinal plants and the creation of the Centro de Conservación y Educación Ambiental (Center for Conservation and Environmental Education: CCEAM), located within the Botanical Garden of Asunción.

Organic status

From 1 January 2015, under leadership of head gardener Nicolas Freyre and Director Pierre-André Loizeau, the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens became 100% organic, the first public garden in Switzerland to formally meet the standards of Bio Suisse. Although previously almost entirely organic, a bachelor student from the Haute École du paysage, d'ingénierie et d'architecture de Genève validated the requirements. In 2017 the garden will be able to display the Bio Suisse 'Bud' certification label on completion of the required qualification period.