Women's Jardin Val Rahmeh-Menton and Villa Serena

The Val Rahmeh-Menton Botanical Garden is home to an exceptional variety of plants, including 1,800 subtropical, tropical and Mediterranean species, representing 160 families and 700 genera. The Mediterranean vegetation typical of the Côte d'Azur, with its olive trees, cypresses and citrus fruits, is accompanied by exotic plants from subtropical and tropical regions: in particular, one comes across the Arabian coffee plant, the Chilean coconut palm, the Tassili cypress, the Java cedar and the Cape chestnut, to name but a few of the rarest species. If originally, the Val Rahmeh Garden was an agricultural estate owned by the local noble family de Monléon, laid out on various terraces mainly at the behest of Henriette Marguerite Françoise de Monléon, who had the villa bearing her name built on the property, in the 1920s, the mansion passed to Rahmeh Théodora Swinburne, daughter of Sir John Swinburne, a British baronet, who had an exotic garden designed by Frédéric Orrigo, an architect who loved the Italo-Provençal style. The next owner May Sherwood Campbell, on the other hand, had studied botany, so she exchanged plants with other like-minded enthusiasts on all continents, greatly enriching the garden and later sold it with the entire property to the French State. Sacred lotus, water lilies and papyrus proliferate in the large pond, while succulents and xerophytes dwell in the three historic greenhouses. The Garden of Villa Serena, also in Menton, is also very exotic, not only for its collection of palms, Dracaena Drago and Cycadaceae, but also for its spectacular location at the foot of the cliffs: the mansion was erected in 1886, designed by Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera, at the behest of the Foucher de Careil family in the district known as Little Africa. One can stay at the Hotel Pavillon Imperial while enjoying its tropical garden and the view of the Mediterranean Sea.