THE BOTANICAL GARDEN OF VAUVILLE
Botanical garden, exotic garden
Less than half a mile from the coast and exposed to the warm, salty winds of the Gulf Stream, Vauville’s Botantical Garden has a surprising and unique collection of evergreen species from the southern hemisphere acclimatized and cared for by three generations of passionate family.
Vauville, the poetry of organized disorder
The garden’s history began after the Second World War, in 1948, when Eric Pellerin, a perfumer and sailor, together with his wife Nicole, decided to give the cow pasture adjoining the thousand-year-old castle a completely different destiny. Then begins an extraordinary botanical adventure and a family history. Guillaume Pellerin and his wife Cléophée de Turckheim took up the torch in the 1980s, passing it on to their second son Eric in 2017.
At Vauville, the main challenge is to provide species from the Antipodes with the right conditions to put down new roots. A selection of robust plants planted en masse at the edge of the garden has created windbreaks and a setting that is conducive to the development of a collection of plants from South America, Africa, Asia, New Zealand and Tasmania…
The botanical garden at Vauville is part of a tradition of acclimatising exotic plants brought back to Europe by explorers and botanists who travelled to faraway lands. These rare specimens had the status of ‘curiosities’, sought after for their botanical and sometimes medical interest, as well as for their aesthetic qualities – colours, bark, foliage, habit – in this way, plants and trees were seen as objets d’art, but above all, they conveyed the imagination of elsewhere.
The spirit of the Vauville botanical garden is one of movement. The latter is reflected in the winding layout, by the variations in volumes, by the freedom given to trees and shrubs to grow, by the undulations of the foliage due to the sea breeze, by the succession of rooms of greenery with evocative names : “the traveling trees”, “the path of discovery”, “the blue vault”…which transport the walker, in a constantly evolving garden.
Far from the rigid image of the conservatory, Vauville succeeds in the synthesis between poetry and rigorous scientific approach.
The botanical collection
The botanical collection of the garden began with the specimens collected and imported into the Cotentin by Eric Pellerin when he traveled the world as a perfumer. It is regularly enriched by its successors. In addition to its scientific diversity, all the plants constitute a magnificent palette of shades of green in the foliage of trees and evergreen shrubs, to which the soft or shimmering hues of the blossoms are mixed: amaryllis, echiums pininana, libertia, callistemons, rhododendrons , hydrangeas, pseudopanax, southern cordylins, trachycarpus, strelitzias, eucalyptus, yuccas, bamboos, cistus, anigozanthos, tree ferns, jasmines, edychiums, camellias, fig trees …
The Botanical Garden of Vauville has been listed in the Supplementary Inventory of Historical Monuments since 1992, classified as a Remarkable Garden since 2004, member since 2018 of BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) but also “Partner Garden” of the Royal Horticultural Society. It is sponsored by the Jardin des Plantes de Rouen in order to be approved “Botanical Garden of France”.
It’s in the news
Le Parisien Jardin, 30 October 2023 at 10.58 am
Le jardin botanique de Vauville
14 Route des Fontaines
50440 Vauville, La Hague
Phone: +33 (0) 2 33 10 00 00
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