La Rambertia

A garden dedicated to a poet

At the summit of the Rochers-de-Naye, 2,045 metres above Lake Geneva, La Rambertia is one of the oldest alpine botanical gardens in Switzerland. It owes its name to Eugène Rambert (1830-1886), professor of French literature, Vaud poet, amateur naturalist and enthusiastic member of the Swiss Alpine Club, to whose memory the garden is dedicated.

La Rambertia is a private garden, maintained by the Société du Jardin alpin de la Rambertia. It is reached by the rack railway that climbs from Montreux to the Rochers-de-Naye.

From the Favratia to the Rambertia (1892-1897)

The garden was long in the making. In 1892 a first alpine garden was laid out near the Lac de Jaman. In 1894 a Montreux society took it over, moved it to the north slope of the Rochers-de-Naye and named it “Favratia”, in memory of the poet Louis Favrat (1827-1893), professor of French and then curator of the Botanical Museum of Lausanne.

In 1896 that society was dissolved and handed the garden to the new Société de La Rambertia, devoted to its upkeep and development. In 1896-1897 the definitive location, the present one, was chosen: six hectares where trees and alpine plants were planted, already 650 varieties in 1896. The first president was the Geneva botanist Henry Correvon, a renowned figure of alpine gardening.

In 1904 La Rambertia hosted at Naye the first Congress of Alpine Gardens, under the presidency of Prince Roland Bonaparte.

A century and a half of rockeries

The garden turned each of its anniversaries into a milestone. In 1971, for its 75th, it published a booklet listing its plants; in 1996, for its centenary, it created the “Himalaya – Nepal” rockery; in 2021, for its 125th, a new rockery took in indigenous plants.

Since 2002, admission to the garden has been included in the Rochers-de-Naye railway ticket. In 2016 a hundred-year building lease secured its future on the land it occupies, and the Dentaux path was restored for a circuit inside and outside the garden; in 2017 the old chalet was rebuilt in larch wood, more resistant to the weather at altitude (official website ↗).

The link with the Ribaupierre musicians

Among the garden’s creators was Émile Jean Cécile de Ribaupierre, a horticulturist in Clarens and the father of a family that did a great deal for the musical life of the Riviera. The violinist André de Ribaupierre and his brother Emile, founder of the Orchestre de Ribaupierre, were among his children: this is what ties this mountain garden to the musical history of Montreux.