National Botanical Conservatory of Brest

Brest, France, France

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The National Botanical Conservatory of Brest, also known as Conservatoire botanique national de Brest, is an extraordinary botanical garden located at 52 Allée du Bot in the Stang-Alar valley of Brest, Finistère, in the Brittany region of France, covering 32 to 47 hectares.

Founded in 1975 on land that was formerly a quarry and rubbish dump purchased by the municipality in 1971, it became the world's first botanical garden dedicated specifically to conserving endangered plants and since 1990 has been designated a National Botanical Conservation Center to protect endangered and protected plants of the Armorican Massif (including parts of Brittany, Basse-Normandie, and Pays de la Loire).

The conservatory houses approximately 1,700 to 1,800 species of endangered plants, the largest concentration of endangered plants in France, of which 20 species have been preserved mainly through the conservatory's actions, and about 95% of the plants in its tropical greenhouses are endangered species, some already extinct in their wild state.

The site features a public landscaped park spanning 2 km stretching to Moulin Blanc beach with gardens, woods, lakes, and ponds creating a peaceful atmosphere, plus tropical greenhouses containing over 200 taxa subdivided into four sections: tropical mountains, dry tropics, humid tropical forests, and subtropical ocean islands, guiding visitors through different climatic regions from wet tropical mountains to wet and steaming tropical rain forests.