Primavera 2025, the rare plant festival!

[Press release] - Published on February 20, 2025 in Press Room

On Sunday, March 23, 2025, until 6 p.m., Montpellier's Jardin des Plantes will host the^20th edition of "Primavera." For this occasion, Montpellier's plant and spring festival returns with conferences and stands promoting biodiversity. It's an opportunity to learn more in an exceptional setting, France's oldest botanical garden.

An annual event for botany enthusiasts

Since 2004, the annual Primavera event (open to all) has attracted an average of between 6,000 and 8,000 visitors. This event will also be an opportunity to talk to professionals at nursery stands presenting, among other things: vegetable, aromatic, medicinal, indoor and succulent plants. This year, no fewer than 50 nurseries from all over the south of France, 12 environmental protection associations, 1 specialist publisher and 4 artists will be present.

Conference program for the day

• 2:00 p.m.: “In search of agriculture and forests of the past: an archaeobotanical investigation” by Jérôme ROS, CNRS research fellow at the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier
• 3:00 p.m.: “Facing aridity, the power of trees” – Moroccan and peasant inspirations for agroforestry by Geneviève Michon, ethnobotanist , emeritus research director at IRD (Research Institute for Development). 
• 4:00 p.m.: “Boissier de Sauvages and Linnaeus, a thirty-year friendship” by Thierry Lavabre-Bertrand, Director Emeritus of the Jardin des Plantes. 

A few words about the Montpellier Botanical Garden

The Jardin des Plantes is the oldest jewel in the Faculty of Medicine's heritage. These institutions complement each other through their shared goal of understanding, celebrating, and preserving life: human life for the Faculty of Medicine, and plant life for the botanical garden.

In 2022, Montpellier's Jardin des Plantes was awarded the "Jardin Remarquable" label by the Ministry of Culture, which recognizes gardens and parks, whether public or private, that are of cultural, aesthetic, historical, or botanical interest. In 2022, it also received €3.4 million in funding from the FDJ during Stéphane Bern's heritage mission (an initiative to preserve many iconic sites in France) in order to completely restore the Intendance house.