Jardin Botanique de Bordeaux

This guide to the Jardin Botanique de Bordeaux dares you to get lost on purpose in a real labyrinth, planted rather than paved, tucked past the Esplanade Linne entrance since it opened in Bastide in 2003. You'll hear how the site began as an industrial patch on the Garonne's right bank chosen in the mid-1990s to stitch a derelict district back into the city, and how landscape architect Catherine Mosbach and architect Francoise-Helene Jourda, who won the commission in 1999, folded play straight into the science rather than fencing off a pristine collection. Follow the arboretum's leaves from small and tidy to big and wild as you drift toward the water garden.