Guided tour of La Jaÿsinia Alpine Botanical Garden, in French

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A guided tour in our Botanical Garden. In French only.

Carved into the hillside in the heart of the village, the Jaÿsinia garden bears witness to the exceptional destiny of a woman intimately linked to Samoëns: Marie-Louise Cognacq-Jaÿ.
Marie-Louise Jaÿ, born in Samoëns in 1838, tended her herd of goats until she was 15, on the hill on which the Jaÿsinia is built today. She then decided to go to Paris to find work, where she met her husband Ernest Cognacq. Hard-working and thrifty, together they founded La Samaritaine, a Parisian department store whose success was immediate.
Marie-Louise and Ernest, both heads of an immense fortune and childless, devoted the rest of their lives to charity, never forgetting Marie-Louise's native village. In 1906, she bought the land to create an alpine botanical garden, designed by landscape architect Jules Allemand.
Today, this 3.7-hectare park, classified as a "remarkable garden", boasts over 2,500 species of mountain flowers from all over the world, taking visitors to the four corners of the globe.
Europe is represented by the Alpine blue thistle, the Lebanese cedar and the Balkan crocus. Giant sequoia and bloodroot come from America.
Asia is also represented by Reverend Father Delavay's peony, while toad lily comes from Japan. Finally, shrubby speedwell comes from New Zealand.
To make this garden even more beautiful, a water source has been diverted through pipes dug by hand into the mountain to supply the various garden worlds, including fountains, waterfalls, ponds and the marsh.
Other attractions, just as beautiful as the plants, are to be discovered in this alpine botanical garden: the chapel of La Jaÿsinia, a breathtaking view of the charming village of Samoëns and the Giffre valley, or, at the summit, the ruins of the Château de la Tornalta, set in a bosky bower...

Meet in front of the Samoëns tourist office.