Jardin des plantes de Nantes

The Jardin des plantes de Nantes (73,280 m2) is a municipal botanical garden located on Rue Stanislas Baudry, Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, Pays de la Loire, France. It is open daily without charge, but a fee is charged for the greenhouses. The city's earliest botanical garden dated to 1688 as a small medicinal plant collection outside the city walls, near today's Rue Paré. It subsequently fell into disuse but in 1726 was revived as a Royal Garden for exotic plants. By 1790 the garden contained more than 600 species but by 1795 the garden had dwindled to fewer than 150 exotic plants; it again reverted to a medicinal garden, and slowly declined until its demise in 1877. The current garden was first established in 1806 under the leadership of Jean Alexandre Hectot, and by 1807 contained a magnificent magnolia which still endures (the Magnolia d'Hectot, 16 years old when transplanted). It became a municipal garden in 1820 and opened to the public in 1829. Under director Jean Marie Ecorchard, it was restyled as an English park containing some 2500 species.