Le Jardin d'Hannibal

The Jardin du Lautaret, situated at an altitude of 2,100 metres opposite the glaciers of the Meije, is the highest altitude garden in Europe. It is home to a unique diversity of Alpine flora, divided into continents. You’ll find plants from the Alps, the Rockies, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, Japan, the Arctic, the Andes, Patagonia and the mountains of Africa. Since the 19th century, this garden has been a centre for botanical research and conservation, where scientists, students and gardeners come to analyse the remarkable biodiversity of the site and exchange seeds to enrich and preserve the memory of species.

In the company of researchers, photographer Marine Lanier stayed at Le Lautaret to make film shots of the garden. In the evenings, as the images mingled with stories of Hannibal crossing the Alps via this pass during his war against Rome, they created a phantasmagorical vision of the future. The garden then became a bastion of resistance in the face of climate change, with, for example, the “flying alpine pasture” project, in which eight tonnes of alpine pasture were moved by helicopter and transplanted downstream to study the consequences of rising temperatures on the flora.