Natural Attraction, Park

The Botanical Garden of Pamplemousses is one of the oldest gardens in the world. Its history dates back to 1770, when the French botanist Pierre Poivre founded a garden here in order to grow plants for the production of spices. Currently, the garden occupies about 25 hectares and its collection of plants includes more than 650 varieties, including baobabs, bottle palms, giant water lilies, dozens of medicinal plants, a large spice garden and many others. One of the main attractions of the garden are 85 different varieties of palm trees brought from different parts of the world, the most unusual of them are the Elephant's Foot, cabbage, and fan palms. Among the water lilies, the most famous is “Amazon Victoria”; its leaves reach 2 meters in diameter and can support a weight of up to 50 kilograms. Visitors to the garden are enveloped in extraordinary smells, because such aromatic plants as nutmeg, tea tree, clove tree, camphor tree, and magnolia grow here. Many trees in the garden were planted personally by political leaders: Indira Gandhi, Francois Mitterrand, Robert Mugabe.