The Garden Collections

The Alpine Garden
The Animal Park
The Arboretum
The Garden of the Herbaria
The Garden of smell and touch
The Greenhouses
The Historic Rose Garden
The Path of Evolution
The Perennial Collection
The Ruderal Zone
The Ethnobotanical Gardens
The Seasonal Flower Beds
The Shrub Collection in Pots

A new habitat in the Botanical Garden: the ruderal zone

An entirely new habitat has been created at this site, not only at the level of its physical and biological structure (sand, ballast, gravel, paving stones, natural dried stone walls) but also at the visual and anthropological levels (rails, buffer stops, a small railway carriage, a bell, advertising panels etc.).

Ruderal plants are endangered

Introducing a railway line into a Botanical Garden may seem completely crazy at first, unless one knows that this particularly dry habitat protects a flora that is extremely interesting: that of ruderal plants. These plants are endangered on the Swiss plateau. Ruderal plants occupy the uncultivated land that man has left open (roadsides, trampled ground, waste land, railway lines, etc.). Found mainly in the countryside, these sites have been sacrificed to the dogma of profit by the use of herbicides, levelling and concreting. After aquatic and wet-land plants, ruderal plants are the most endangered in Switzerland, with more than 40% of its species on the "Red List". Towns, with their rich variety of habitats (such as the edges of railway lines), are excellent niches for these kinds of plants. Unfortunately, here too, these plants are endangered, principally by an obsession for order and a philosophy of "cleanliness", whereby the presence of these plants is seen as negligent management. So we cement joints, add concrete, clean up and tarmac our paths, etc.

This new ruderal habitat in the CJB provides the following:

• A site of observation, of discovery and wonder. Sitting on a bench in a paved zone colonized by vegetation, one can immerse oneself in this environment with the sounds of the trains that pass-by a few metres away on the Geneva-Lausanne railway line. It is between April and June that the diversity and colours of the plants are at their best, with over 60 species present on this small surface.
• An area for conservation and protection, with a small cultivated part – we plant endangered species from the canton which can grow here in peace – and a part that is open to spontaneous colonization by species typical of this habitat.
• An educative site in which one can show, one hand, that urban habitats can also contain beautiful flowers that it is necessary to protect, and on the other, that a little spontaneity and disorder is favourable for biodiversity. This shows just how important human activities are for the maintenance of this biodiversity that we hold so much to heart.

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