The Montreal Botanical Garden is where you stroll in autumn to see the first colors in town, where you play with the kids in winter, where you lie under the cherry blossoms in spring, where you cool off in summer… It’s one of the city’s beating hearts, according to the City of Montreal, and one of the five most popular gardens in the world…
The Garden, one of the most important parts of L’Espace pour la Vie (which also includes the Biodôme and the Insectarium, among others), is almost 100 years old – it was founded in 1931. In the run-up to this anniversary, the City of Montreal announced on April 7 that it would be investing $430 million over the next 15 years in a “major overhaul of its infrastructure”.
The Botanical Garden
Founded in 1931, the Botanical Garden is incredibly popular – in 2024, the City of Montreal counted over 800,000 visitors.
Its founder, Brother Marie-Victorin, and its first landscape architect-curator, Henry Teuscher, envisioned the Garden as a place where city dwellers could “rediscover” or “preserve the salutary link with nature” that often makes big-city dwellers a little melancholy…
Because the Botanical Garden, with its greenhouses containing different types of plants (hot, cold, alpine, etc.), is more than just a beautiful place where you can listen to the bees chattering and the birds singing, bathed in the scent of flowers and morning dew. It’s an oasis of biodiversity with a conservation vocation.
The 15-year development plan
The Ville de Montréal has scheduled 15 years of work at the Botanical Garden to preserve its vocation as a guardian of biodiversity, but also to make it more inclusive and eco-responsible, so that for its 100th anniversary, it will once again be at the forefront of biodiversity conservation.
Several projects are planned, including greenhouse and infrastructure renovations to improve accessibility, reduce GHG emissions and improve drinking water consumption. The gardens will be renovated one by one, to ensure that the Botanical Garden remains open and can still be enjoyed during its youth cure…
We can’t wait to see the cherry blossoms at the Botanical Garden this spring, and the Garden’s greenhouses reopened on April 2, so we’ll be rushing over to visit them before they’re renovated!
Enjoy your visit!