Jardin des plantes d'Angers

The jardin des plantes d'Angers (4 hectares) is a municipal park and botanical garden located on Place Pierre Mendès France, Angers, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire, France. It is open daily without charge. The garden was first established in 1777 by Doctor Luthier de La Richerie, founder of the Société des Botanophiles, as an amateur's botanical garden in response to Anger's first such garden, maintained by the Faculty of Medicine circa 1740–1750. Its first location was on the Château Gontier and Bressigny roads, near today's rue Béclard, but that site proved too small and its rental too uncertain. Therefore, in 1789 the society purchased the former property of the Benedictines of Saint Sergius at the bottom of the valley Saint-Samson, which forms today's this jardin des plantes ('garden of the plants'. The site was cleared in the winter of 1790–1791, and in 1791 Merlet de La Boulaye gave the first free, public course on botany; in the following year, he wrote out a list in alphabetical order of the garden's collections, including the first magnolia in Angers and an agave from America. The city purchased the grounds of the Saint-Samson church shortly afterwards, and merged them with the botanical garden, with the result declared national property in 1792. By 1811 the garden contained more than 2,000 plants arranged in two sections: the School of Botany in the lower part and c