Discovery and science

Gardeners and collection managers work year-round, partly on site and partly in Grenoble, especially in winter, thanks to the alpine greenhouses. They prepare for the following season, which, almost like a space mission, requires meticulous planning to make the most of every summer day. They also take care of the Robert Ruffier-Lanche arboretum on campus. But this garden is more than just a garden; it is also the high-altitude research station of the CNRS andUniversité Grenoble Alpes welcomes researchers from all over the world throughout the year to study the functioning of these alpine ecosystems... who then spend six months of the year under the snow. This shows how important it is for scientists to also understand what happens in winter. Many teams come to work on a number of sites, including the FluxAlp flux tower located in the Charmasses meadow in the commune of Le Monêtier-les-Bains.




The Garden is also a place where people come to learn. The thousands of visitors who take advantage of the three free tours offered every day in summer know this, as do those who come to listen to the free public lectures on Mondays at 5 p.m. in July and August. But researchers also need ongoing training, and in February 2018, the Garden hosted two schools in quick succession. After an initial school designed to train around twenty students and young researchers from the Grenoble site, the fourth session of an international school was held at the Garden, following two years in Finland and one year in Switzerland. Organized by the Météo France snow study center in Grenoble and the Snow and Avalanche Research Institute in Davos (Switzerland), this school brought together 40 people for a week, including student researchers from around the world (14 countries), trainers and supervisors, with the support of the CNRS,Université Grenoble Alpes, the Grenoble Observatory of Universe Sciences, and several European scientific associations. Thank you to the team at the Hôtel des Glaciers for their hospitality, to the Grands Bains du Monêtier for the historic closing evening... and to the department's staff who do everything they can to keep the Col accessible every day!




Thanks to Pierre Jacquet from OSUG for his winter photos of the garden.