Parco Abbé J.M. Henry

On the slopes above Courmayeur, at Plan Gorret, lies the park created by one of the Aosta Valley's most unusual figures: Abbé Joseph-Marie Henry, priest, botanist and alpinist. Inaugurated in 1901 as a botanical garden, revived in 1987, and now a fenced woodland of over thirteen thousand square metres, it is the town's historic public garden.

Why it matters

The park preserves the memory of a man who joined three callings — priesthood, botany and mountaineering — in an era when Aosta Valley clergy were among the region's leading natural scientists. Joseph-Marie Henry had collaborated with Pierre Chanoux in creating the celebrated Chanousia alpine garden at the Little St Bernard Pass, and in his native Courmayeur he planted a garden of his own. Though the original flower collections have largely gone, the enclosure survives as green public space with documented monumental trees and a creation story tied to the intellectual history of the valley. Its wooded paths and open views toward Mont Blanc preserve the character of Henry's garden.

What to notice

Read the park as two overlapping layers. The first is Henry's garden: at its height it held more than 250 flower varieties gathered during his travels, plus 150 exotic specimens, within a plot of roughly 1,200 square metres — an astonishing density for a mountain garden. Little of that planting survives, but the protective shrubs he established are still identifiable: privet, sloe, dog rose and pimpinellifolia rose, hawthorn, lantana and honeysuckle. The second layer is the 1987 revival, when the regional forestry corps cleaned and fenced the area and labelled the forest species, expanding the enclosure to over 13,000 square metres of mostly natural woodland. Among its living heirlooms are exotic conifers planted in the 1930s — a Douglas fir and a giant fir later declared monumental trees. The forest species and gaps in the canopy frame the massif above.

Context and history

The park was inaugurated in 1901 at Plan Gorret, at 1,272 metres, on ground above the town. For several years the abbé tended the botanical garden himself, and it drew tourists and botanists to Courmayeur; when he was transferred away, the garden slipped into gradual abandonment. Henry's wider biography explains the garden's ambition: he was among the last of that Valdostan clergy engaged with alpinism, botany and science, a collaborator of Pierre Chanoux at Chanousia, president of the Société de la Flore Valdôtaine from 1901 to 1941, author of the celebrated popular history of Valle d'Aosta, and a tireless high-altitude walker whose exploits included leading a donkey to the summit of the Gran Paradiso in 1931. The 1987 revival — timed to the fortieth anniversary of his death — returned the site to public use as a wooded park, with the Valdostan forestry corps cleaning, fencing and labelling the trees. The abbé is also honoured in town: a statue of 1966 stands on Piazza Abbé Henry beside the parish church he overlooks.