the National Botanical Conservatory of Bailleul is home to more than 1,000 species

For the first time, children from a kindergarten class discover the Botanical Conservatory of Bailleul (Nord). And their morning begins in the garden of wild plants. Here, we observe, we touch, we feel, nature education even at an early age. “Not many of us do environmental education. Indeed, it is a source of wealth”, says Olivier Lebleu, nature educator. “We’re going to take pictures, we’re going to talk about it in class, and then we’re also going to continue our little garden that we started at school”adds Pauline Terrier, teacher.

More than 1,000 species of plants are to be discovered in the garden. Thousands of others are sheltered from the light in the herbaria, works of immense heritage interest. The Conservatory is also a seed bank. In refrigerators are stored 34 million seeds of 600 botanical species, just waiting to return to the ground. In the garden of the Conservatory, “this is where we cultivate plants that are rare, protected, in order to then reintroduce them into the natural environment”explains Vianney Fouquet, nature guide at the National Botanical Conservatory of Bailleul.