Close to the center of Menton, the Val Rahmeh Botanical Garden will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2025.
A bit of history...
Classified as a “Remarkable Garden,” the Val Rahmeh Botanical Garden, an island of exoticism, was created in the 19th century by a noble family from Menton, the De Monléons. At the time, it consisted of farmland and a building dating from 1875.
Then Lord Percy Radcliffe (1874-1934), a British army general and former governor of Malta, acquired the property in 1905 with his wife Rahmeh Theodora Swinburne (1865-1924).
He transformed the property into a landscaped garden featuring exotic species, including a magnificent avenue of palm trees.
Then, in the 1920s, the villa was enlarged and redesigned in an Italian-Provençal style by the architect Henri Cerutti-Maori.
In memory of Lord Radcliffe's wife, who died prematurely, the estate was named “Val Rahmeh,” meaning “valley of tranquility” (in Arabic-Persian).
The property was sold in 1934, and successive owners added new species to the garden.
In 1957, Miss May Bud Campbell (1900-1982), a wealthy and eccentric Englishwoman, purchased the property and added a new plot of land in the lower part of the estate.
The property became a reception venue for local dignitaries and her many English connections on the coast.
Miss May Bud Campbell, a passionate botanist, added rare and spectacular species from all continents to the garden.
She earned the nickname “Lady of the Daturas” by planting trees from the Solanaceae family.
Then, in debt, she sold the estate in 1966 to the State, which entrusted its management to the National Museum of Natural History, which then transformed it into a veritable botanical garden, with thematic displays and clearly identified plants.
It opened to the public in 1967.
The Garden...
It offers visitors 15,000 square meters of space featuring 1,800 Mediterranean, tropical, and subtropical species, including 140 unique ones from around the world.
It is home to coffee trees from Arabia, coconut palms from Chile, cedars from Java, date palms from the Canary Islands, and angel's trumpets, which are extinct in the wild.
The Garden is home to many endangered plants.
A garden not to be missed.
Val Rahmeh Botanical Garden
Avenue Saint-Jacques,
06500 Menton
Tel.: 04 93 35 86 72.
https://www.jardinbotaniquevalrahmehmenton.fr/fr
Translated with DeepL.com
(free version)
