The Founding Trees of Jardin Albert 1er

This garden began as a swamp with a name that admitted it: Prato de la Fous, roughly the meadow of the mad, marshy ground at the mouth of the Paillon river that nobody had found a use for. A drainage and landscaping project started in 1829 gave the site its first real shape, and in 1851 the city drew up a specific planting list, 70 horse chestnuts, 60 elms, 40 lindens, 30 acacias and 24 mimosas among them, before levelling and planting the ground in 1852. The garden has changed names as often as it has changed fashion since, Jardin Paradis, Jardin des Plantes, Jardin des Palmiers, before settling on its current name in 1914 in tribute to the Belgian king's resistance to Germany. Ten plane trees stand among the garden's mix today, alongside descendants of that original 1851 species list, though no individual tree here carries its own measured age, so any figure is an estimate based on the garden's founding rather than a documented record. It remains one of Nice's oldest continuously maintained public gardens, a short walk from where the Paillon once flowed uncovered.