The Arboretum in Aubonne just a few miles from Nyon is a lovely place for an easy walk for everyone, including families with young children. There is lots of nature to both see and hear – the frogs in the lake in the centre of the grounds are particularly noisy at this time of year! And if you’re lucky you may also get to see a beaver building a dam in the water. The Arboretum is open all year round. Dogs must be kept on a lead.
There are 3000 species of trees to admire and the well laid out paths give visitors a choice of walks, whether it’s a gentle stroll around with a pushchair or something a little bit more energetic up hill.
Entrance is free and there is a small café/buvette together with a visitors centre and a wood museum.
For the naturalists there is a “dead-wood” trail amongst many others – see below.
There is a North American tree species section
The trees are used for research purposes, and there are reconstructions of forest practices of the past
Such as this charcoal burner.
Lovely walks across wooden bridges
Take a listen to the frogs in the short video below
Carmen Dominik says
Reading the article Noises of Nature 26.05.2016 in La Côte , I just want to make a comment: the thousands of tadpoles swimming around in the lake of Aubonne Arboretum once mature will definitively not make any noise in the future as they are tadpoles of toads and not of frogs. and toads make no noise at all, just a little croak croak !Once mature these tadpoles are leaving the pond/water if they survive as what happens so often in nature : the breed of some becomes the food for others.
The toads are laying their eggs in chains early in the year and these eggs became the tadpoles you are seeing now, the craoking frogs are having their ”amours” later in the season that’s why you hear them croaking so loud now, specially the males as the females are quiet, so their eggs ( and their tadpoles) are still to come…!!!
Catherine says
Hello Carmen,
Thank you so much for alerting me to my mistake! Apologies for the slight delay in replying to your comments, however if you have been reading La Côte, you may have heard that I had a pretty bad accident with my writing hand, so now all my typing is currently done via dictation software which can be very fickle at times so I am dealing with emails and correspondence in small batches. Anyway, now I know little bit more about the difference between toads and frogs so that is super. I will amend my mistake in next week’s column. Thank you for taking the time to write, feedback is much appreciated. Kind regards Catherine Nelson-Pollard