Gardens Festival 2026 at the Bois de Vincennes: nature workshops and a guided tour with a forester

The Gardens Festival returns to Paris on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026 to put nature back in the spotlight. For two days, Paris’s parks, squares, gardens and woodlands open their doors for free to kids and grown-ups, with activities that let you explore green spaces, their biodiversity, and the professionals who tend them daily.

• To be read
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• Gardens Festival 2026 at Villemin Garden: workshops, mini-gardens and family games
• Fête des Jardins 2023 at Promenade Pereire: Concerts, beekeeping and games for children

From one site to another, gardening workshops, creative activities, games, tours and meet-and-greets with gardeners, arborists or foresters offer a practical, hands-on way to connect with nature. For children, it’s a chance to touch, smell, plant and observe, and to gain a better understanding of the relationships between plants and animals. Adults can, in turn, chat with professionals and discover some of the practices used in the city’s green spaces.

The festival also highlights Paris’s varied natural landscapes. Because the Garden Festival isn’t confined to the little neighborhood squares: the city’s two major woods also take part in the event. A great opportunity to head out into the open without leaving the capital and turn a Sunday stroll into a nature outing with the kids.

In the Bois de Vincennes, meet at the Maurice Boitel promenade, along the Daumesnil Lake, on the two days from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.. Here, the program fully leans into family-friendly discovery with simple, hands-on activities: making seed sachets, origami, coloring, or repotting into pots crafted on site.

Children can also fashion small tipis from bamboo, pine cones, stones and other natural materials, before testing their knowledge with several quizzes on plants, seeds and animals. A highlight of the afternoon, a guided tour of the Bois de Vincennes led by a forester departs at 3 p.m. It’s a chance to make the most of the Garden Festival and gain a better understanding of this vast Parisian woodland.

The Garden Festival Schedule at the Bois de Vincennes

Workshops and Activities

• Discovery of aromatic herbs
• Creation of seed sachets
• Origami
• Coloring activities
• Repotting into pots crafted on site
• Tipis built from natural materials
• Information on the missions and recruitment of front-desk and monitoring agents
• Overview of the missions and recruitment of municipal police officers

Guided tour of the Bois de Vincennes

• Guided by a forester, starts at 15h

Games

• Plant and seed identification quiz

• A game exploring the interactions between plants and animals
• A quiz about the Bois de Vincennes and its curiosities
• A game about the regulations governing Paris's woods

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