Alpine garden

The Semnoz Alpine Garden is a 1,500 m high portion of alpine pasture that has not been grazed for more than 50 years to preserve the typical flora of the alpine meadows.

This area allows you to discover or revise the typical botany of the Alpine meadows. Each summer, more than 100 plant species are identified, labelled and highlighted.Trails are marked and autonomous games are installed on the site, enough to delight young and old.
The Alpine Garden is open every day in summer time. Permanences are also held every Wednesday by an FNE74 employee to ensure the maintenance of the Alpine Garden and welcome nature lovers!

In 2019 a comparative study on the floristic diversity between the Semnoz Alpine Garden and the meadows grazed nearby was carried out. The results indicate there is a significant gap in floristic diversity and plant covering between the scarcely maintained Alpine meadow and the regularly pastured one.
Indeed, there were only 24 different floristic species identified on the grazed meadow while there were 62 on the Alpine Garden. Moreover, in the Alpine Garden 12 species represent more than 50% of the plant covering, compared to only 3 species in the grazed meadow.