Parc de la Guirlande

This former 18th-century private garden, acquired by the city in 1978, is full of surprises: a shell-encrusted water buffet extended by formal parterres, a rockery-adorned basin surrounded by groves.

A little history: Until the 18th century, the estate was a métairie (farm buildings and land). Bought by Pierre André de Giraud de Lagarde, canon of Montpellier Cathedral, it became a "folie", probably designed by architect Jean Antoine Giral. The house was enlarged to include the old building. A parterre à la française was designed on the upper terrace, following a new longitudinal axis between a new portal and an exceptional water buffet. In 1798, Jean-Louis Haguenot, an apothecary, bought the property, renaming it the Haguenot Garden. The farmland was sold in 1976, and the City acquired the park and building in 1978.

The name "la Guirlande" seems to have arisen from confusion with that of the other Hôtel Haguenot, that of the professor at Montpellier's Faculty of Medicine, on rue de la Merci. The entire estate is protected as a site by an arrété dated July 24, 1961.

The residence, the Maison pour Tous Albertine Sarrazin, bears the name of the writer who died in Montpellier in 1967, aged 29, author of "L'Astragale".