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Origin and history

The Brûlé Garden, also known as the Happy Valley, is a 19th century private Creole garden located in the Brûlé, a district of Saint-Denis on the island of La Réunion. This garden, designed and furnished by Achilles Berg, a doctor, is part of a ravine and is divided into three distinct parts: the "lontan" garden around a pond, the useful garden, and an arboretum. The central house, now extinct after a fire in the 1980s, was surrounded by a landscaped area structured in terraces and alleys, reflecting the Creole way of life of the time.

The Brûlé district served as a resort for the inhabitants of Saint-Denis. The garden, registered as the Historic Monuments on 26 January 2012, illustrates the importance of private green spaces in local culture. The lower part, formerly dedicated to citrus orchards, and the central vegetable garden bear witness to the balance between utility and aesthetics. The modern garden, installed on a plateau with a kiosk, perpetuates this tradition by favouring fruit trees and aromatic plants.

The garden structure follows the natural topography of the ravine, with a main pedestrian path and secondary aisles forming an amphitheatre. A platform was reserved for the vegetable garden, while the forest bordered the whole. This site, now protected, offers a rare testimony of the 19th century Creole gardens, mixing historical heritage and adaptation to the Réunion landscape.

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