
To mark 30 years of Hortus Botanicus Helveticus, this exhibition presents the diversity and conservation work of Swiss botanical gardens through thirty panels. Each display showcases living collections and highlights the scientific, conservation and educational roles gardens play in safeguarding plant biodiversity. The presentation combines photographic and interpretative elements with botanical specimens to reveal how gardens document, protect and communicate the value of plant life.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s herbarium, compiled in the 1770s for the printer-bookseller Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, is presented through preserved pressed specimens, its original catalogue and related botanical publications. The historical collection combines scientific observation and aesthetic arrangement, revealing Enlightenment approaches to collecting, classification and the popularisation of plant study. Detailed notes and annotations illuminate Rousseau’s techniques and the materiality of specimens, inviting reflection on how personal curiosity and scholarly networks shaped early modern natural history.
This interactive memory challenge invites participants to test their memory while exploring practical ways to preserve biodiversity based on Geneva’s municipal strategy. Players match “before-and-after” images that illustrate individual and institutional actions, and each correct pair reveals concise information explaining the measure. The activity examines themes such as habitat restoration, species-friendly practices, urban greening and policy responses, helping participants understand the impact and rationale behind everyday and organisational conservation choices.
This workshop explores the traditional process of assembling a herbarium specimen, inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s collections. Participants learn scientific techniques for pressing and mounting dried plants on old paper, practice botanical labelling and nomenclature, and select specimens to create a personal herbarium sheet. The session examines preservation methods, identification principles and the historical context of Rousseau’s approach, combining practical skills with scientific insight to produce a lasting botanical object.
In French.
This lecture explores aquatic plants documented in Geneva’s scientific collections and publications, some dating back to the early nineteenth century. It examines taxonomy, ecology and historical methods used to study species adapted to wet environments. The session presents emblematic taxa — green algae, diatoms and Littorella uniflora — and discusses their ecological roles, identification challenges and the insights these historical records reveal about environmental change and freshwater biodiversity.
In French.
Explore the tiny treasures pressed between paper and time. Discover early plant collections from 20 or 200 years ago and read the notes of a child botanist who kept a journal at four and a half. Together with a botanist and science communicator, examine shapes, colors and textures of preserved leaves, compare old and new specimens, and learn to notice details in nature. This discovery invites curiosity and a gentle hands-on attention to plants.
Kids ages 4 and up. In French.
Culture, curated weekly.
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