History

In 1763, Marc-Antoine-Louis Claret de la Tourette and the abbot Rozier, both great naturalists and botanists, settle the first botanical garden of Lyon in the home of Abundance in Guillotière, on left bank of the Rhone. With a surface of 4.000 m² containing 2.000 plants including 500 usual ones presented according to the system of Tournefort, it is the essential complement of the pharmaceutical studies which are made there by the pupils of the first Royal Veterinary School created in France by Bourgelat..

In 1773, Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert, professor at the Medical school - founded in Poland by king Stanislas - then titular of a pulpit at the College of Medicine of Lyon thinks of the creation of a botanical garden at the end of the new bridge built on the Rhone (Morand bridge). The garden itself presents four parts: in the first one all the useful or curious plants will be grown; opposite, one will find beds which will abundantly provide the plants most employed for the cure of diseases. About the middle a large water part is observed for the culture of watery plants; beyond, the vegetable garden is seen.

In this booklet, Gilibert provides in substance the foundations of the botanical garden which he would settle on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse.

The 7 ventôse year III (February 25th, 1795), the Convention issues the creation of Central Schools, at a rate of a school for 300.000 inhabitants, intended to replace all the old establishments devoted to the instruction under the name of colleges and to teach there sciences, the letters and arts. They must be equipped in the regular manner with a cabinet of physics, chemistry and natural history, and a botanical garden.

Doctor Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert hastens to make apply this last provision which the decree of the 20 prairial year III (June 8, 1795) has just ratified. Since 1797, Gilibert is elected professor of natural history at the Central School of the department of the Rhone and becomes the director of it.

In 1804, he takes possession of the 2 hectares of the closed garden of the Royal Abbey of Bénédictines of la Deserte, in the heart of the Mont Sauvage, south-western slope of the slopes of the Croix-Rousse which are very little urbanized. Patiently, from 1804 to 1814, Gilibert transforms the intimacy of this monastic garden dedicated to the meditation into a botanical garden. The very tilted ground will regularly be the subject of work of clearing and fill.

Under the direction of Nicolas-Charles Seringe, from 1830 to 1857, the Botanical garden or Garden of the Deserte, then Garden of the Empress Joséphine (1805), is again organized by Margel-Fillieux (1820) and becomes public walk. The Botanical garden is very attended: * The flowers draughtsman  comes to copy nature there, to seek there to return its grace, the glare of the colors. The factory draughtsman (in silk trade) often comes to torture elegant forms to make burlesque drawings . The simple gardens lover finds there names that he learns without work, he makes there useful comparisons, the idler comes to agreeably shorten the day there.

Here one removes cubic meters of ground to pour them a little further and little by little to reorganize the slopes of the garden out as walk and terrace of which the softer declivity makes it possible to accomodate the departmental seedbed, layers and frames, a florist school, a school of the plants, a school of the woody plants, and a part reserved for agricultural experiments.

The Botanical garden of Lyon leaves the Tete d'Or. Under the Second Empire, it is a question of making the progress of agriculture and biology available for the public, and especially the diversity of the imported and acclimatized exotic plants from the Colonies. The open air collections are decorated of an alpine garden and a Mexican garden, however that exoticism is put in scene in the large greenhouses whose central house becomes with decades passing an exuberant tropical garden. A fruit-loft, gathering 250 trees with pips and core, is used as control of the trees. Each year, demonstrations will be made there for the use of the professionals and amateurs of garden.

* History of the Botanical garden of Lyon, presented at the public meeting of the Academy of Lyon of August 18, 1835, by Seringe.

Dominique Rey, PérégrinaLyon.