2024
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The most famous garden of the island, where lives a wild nature, patiently tamed by the landscape magician Jean-Philippe Thoze.
With more than 3,000 species of plants, Balata is the most famous garden on the island. Tens of thousands of visitors flock there every year to discover the incredible botanical wealth of this garden created from scratch by Jean-Philippe Thoze, a horticulturist and nature lover.
The landscape gardener knows this property well: his grandmother had built a country house in which he stored the plants he brought back from his countless trips and the seeds he found on the spot, in Martinique. In the mid-1980s, Jean-Philippe Thoze had the idea of gathering his collection of plants and seeds in this green setting, which was once entirely covered by the forest, to create a unique garden. In this valley overlooking Fort-de-France, an exuberant and wild tropical nature has flourished freely for centuries. He named this garden Balata, after the neighborhood located north of the city of Fort-de-France, which was once populated by balatas, a tree adored by the Native Americans and now very rare. Begun in 1982 around the family home, the area is constantly being enriched with royal palms, heliconias, hibiscus, bromeliads, ginger flowers, anthuriums and wild orchids.
To complete this visit, the walk “at the top of the botanical garden”, at more than 15 meters high, entirely secured by nets and accessible to all (from 8 years old), offers a breathtaking panorama on the bay of Fort-de-France and the pitons of Carbet.
Further information
Opening time and information on JARDIN DE BALATA
Daily, 9 am to 6 pm. Adults 16 €. Children €11. Combined ticket with zoo. Adult €31.50, child €21.
Owner's Message
Kingdom of trees, flowers and hummingbirds, the garden of Balata is a magical place, where nature reigns supreme. You have to enter to feel the flood of infinite impressions that suddenly invades the visitor.
Designed as a work of art with patience and tenderness, the garden offers all the poetry of a land where plants evolve in a harmonious mix of colors and scents. It is a place where life recovers its meaning and to discover it, it is enough to take the Route de la Trace which connects the capital to Morne Rouge.
Cascades of sensuality
The entrance lined with alpinias leads to an old small wooden Creole house with a particular charm due to the elegance of its pagoda roof. Inside, antique furniture and engravings recall the life of the past. Far from being a strictly laid out site where the varieties are accumulated and respect a rigorous order, the garden of Balata is a sequence of diverse and poetic atmospheres.
***The visit is conceived as a colorful and shady walk through a morne:
The itinerary begins with the cycas alley and leads to a collection of Bromeliads, epiphytic plants that grow both in the ground and on a natural support. Mainly native to Central and South America, they offer us flowers that can reach 5 to 6 meters high in various shades of green, pink or even blue.
Further on, a strangler fig tree has enclosed in its roots a coconut tree hardly visible today. Going down to a basin where water hyacinths and lotuses compete with elegance in the shade of royal palms, the stroller passes by a cheese tree.
Then the stroll continues through the bamboo grove which is in fact a single clump of Dandrocalamus, the largest bamboo in the world, from a cutting brought back from Guyana 10 years ago by Jean Philippe Thoze.
Another surprising place, the passage under the Pandanus. This shrub with fragile branches naturally emits roots towards the ground in sufficient quantity to always compensate for the considerable weight of its leaves. Everywhere in the garden emanates the scent of porcelain roses, anthuriums, begonias, beeches, hibiscus, heliconias or orchids.
***A promise of moments of serenity and fullness:
It is certain that this visit will satisfy nature lovers.
The immense diversity of species and the succession of colourful atmospheres give the site all the poetry and tranquility of this tropical garden embracing enchanting views of the Pitons du Carbet or the Anses d'Arlet and Cape Solomon.
The designer of this idyllic picture is certainly an artist. Let us rejoice! He is working on the rehabilitation of the Habitation Anse Latouche to create another garden... extraordinary.
Members' reviews on JARDIN DE BALATA
Très bien entretenu et très propre.