There is a particular quality of light in Hyères in early June — not yet the blinding white of high summer, but something softer, filtering through canopies of mature trees onto wide gravel allées still cool from the night. The town, the oldest winter resort on the French Riviera, has always attracted those who knew how to slow down. At Parc Olbius Riquier, that instinct finds its most eloquent expression.
On 6 and 7 June 2026, the park opens a dedicated guided visit of its botanical collections, beginning at 13:00 each day. The meeting point is the stand of the Espaces Verts — the municipal green spaces team — where staff will lead visitors through the species and botanical particularities of this garden inherited from the nineteenth century. The address is 37 Avenue Ambroise Thomas, in the heart of Hyères.
A Legacy Written in Palms and Pathways
The story of this seven-hectare park begins with a private act of civic generosity. Olbius Riquier, a local notable, bequeathed the land to the city of Hyères in 1868. For twenty-six years it served as a branch of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris — that great laboratory of botanical ambition that defined French horticultural thinking in the Second Empire. The design was drawn up by G. Aumont and M. Chevalier, collaborators of the celebrated landscape architect J. P. Barillet-Deschamps, whose hand is also visible in the Bois de Boulogne and the Buttes-Chaumont.
When the park opened to the public in 1877, it wore three hats at once: public garden, acclimatisation garden, and zoological garden. That layered ambition still shapes what you see today. The composition — broad allées, sweeping lawns, large specimen trees, a lake with a cascade — has survived essentially intact, a rare thing in any French city. What has changed is the slow replacement of the former zoo with new landscaped spaces, a process still quietly underway.
'La serre chaude abrite une végétation foisonnante égayée par les multiples couleurs de sa collection d'hibiscus.'
What the Visit Reveals
The botanical richness here is not the kind that announces itself loudly. It accumulates. Among the most arresting elements are palms that seldom appear in mainland French parks — species that flourish because Hyères sits at a climatic hinge point, sheltered by the Maures massif to the north and open to the Mediterranean to the south. There is also a rockery of succulents, and a heated greenhouse whose collection of hibiscus runs through colours that feel almost improbable in a temperate-zone public park.
The Espaces Verts team — the people who tend this place year-round — will serve as guides for both afternoons. That detail matters. Botanical visits led by the gardeners themselves tend to carry a different texture than those delivered by external guides: the knowledge is tactile, seasonal, occasionally opinionated. Expect to learn not only what grows here, but how, and why certain species have thrived in this specific microclimate for well over a century.
For visitors arriving from further along the Côte d'Azur, Hyères itself repays the detour. The medieval old town climbs above the modern centre, and the nearby Presqu'île de Giens and the ferry connections to the Îles d'Or — Porquerolles, Port-Cros, Le Levant — make the town a credible base for several days. The park sits within easy walking distance of the town centre, and early June means the tourist pressure that defines July and August has not yet arrived.
Two afternoons, a knowledgeable guide, and a garden that has been quietly perfecting itself since the reign of Napoleon III. Some things need no further argument.
