Saint Jean de Luz Botanical Garden

Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France, France

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The Saint Jean de Luz Botanical Garden, officially called the Jardin botanique littoral Paul Jovet, is a nonprofit 2.5-hectare coastal botanical garden located at 31 avenue Bernoville Gaëtan in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in the French Basque Country, perched atop a rocky cliff about 50 meters above the Atlantic Ocean.

Founded by French botanist Paul Jovet (1896–1991) of the National Museum of Natural History in Biarritz, the garden was first envisioned in the 1980s, with initial landscaping and pond excavation in 1991, first trees planted in 1996, plant exchanges beginning in 2003, and finally opening to the public in 2008.

The garden's main purpose is to showcase the typical flora of the Basque Coast's littoral environment, including coastal heathland, dunes (white and grey dunes), oak-pine forests, and wetlands, while conserving indigenous vegetation and protecting rare species like the grémil prostré, an endemic and protected plant of the Côte Basque.

The grounds are organized into 17 themed areas including a magnolia collection, plants from five continents, a useful-plant garden with aromatic, medicinal, edible, tinctorial, and fiber plants, an Atlantic oak grove, cliff-hanging plants, rock cactus garden, botanical maze with mostly fragrant shrubs, wetlands, and seaside pine and oak groves.