Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève
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: