Jardin de l'Île Verte Pierre Fernez is a 6,000 m² public botanical garden in the Valescure district of Saint-Raphaël. It opened in the early 2000s on land that had previously been abandoned for decades after the destruction of a Belle Époque villa called Villa L’Île Verte.
The original villa was built in 1884 for Antoine Verdier by architects Ravel and Lacreusette. It stood inside a three-hectare estate and was considered one of the notable Belle Époque properties of Saint-Raphaël. One documented architectural detail is that the terrace included ironwork taken from the Salle des Maréchaux of the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
Local Saint-Raphaël heritage sources identify the villa as having belonged to the medalist and sculptor Oscar Roty during the Belle Époque period. That connection makes sense historically because Saint-Raphaël and nearby Valescure became a seasonal retreat area for wealthy Parisian artists, industrialists and intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th century. Roty was part of exactly that cultural world.
Roty’s ownership adds another layer to the place because he was not just any wealthy resident. By the late 19th century he was one of the most celebrated artists in France, closely tied to republican symbolism and official French artistic institutions. A Belle Époque Riviera villa owned by him would likely have functioned as both a retreat and a social space connected to artistic circles of the period.
Unfortunately, there seems to be very little surviving documentation online about the interiors, Roty’s life there, or photographs of the villa before demolition. The local heritage references focus more on the destruction of the property and the later legal battle over redevelopment than on the Roty years themselves.
In 1973, a developer bought the property and demolished the villa. Construction of an apartment building reportedly began illegally on the site, but the city halted the project. The resulting legal and administrative dispute lasted more than twenty years.
The municipality later redeveloped part of the abandoned land into a botanical garden between 2004 and 2006. The landscape architect was Jean-Jacques Linck. In 2015, the garden was officially named after Pierre Fernez, an agricultural and arboricultural engineer recognized locally for helping preserve the site.
Pierre Fernez himself appears in local environmental and cultural events connected to trees and Mediterranean flora. Archived local reporting describes him leading guided walks and explaining the symbolism, mythology and history of remarkable trees in the garden and elsewhere around Saint-Raphaël.
The place today functions more as a quiet neighborhood botanical garden than a tourist attraction. It is free, guarded year-round, accepts dogs on leash, and remains relatively obscure compared to better-known Riviera gardens.
