Pauline Desfonds (21), of St Etienne, and Rachel Auger (18), of Yerres, are the first students to be hosted by the Dunedin Botanic Garden from Agrocampus Ouest in Angers, where they are completing a five-year horticulture course.
"They work on the grounds, looking after our plant collections as part of the team, and learn the New Zealand way of doing horticulture and how a New Zealand botanic garden is run," Dunedin Botanic Garden collections supervisor Barbara Wheeler said yesterday.
The Dunedin Botanic Garden had previously hosted international students from Ireland and the Netherlands, she said.
"We try to give opportunities for training to as wide a range of people as we can, including international students. We learn as much from them as they do from us. It gives our apprentices the opportunity to see the international way to do things."
The French pair said the Dunedin Botanic Garden was internationally renowned and gave them the opportunity to study unique flora.
"We wanted to come here because it is a world-famous garden," Miss Desfonds said.
"The plants here are very different to back home in France.
I thought your trees would be deciduous, but they're all evergreens, and we don't have divaricating shrubs like you have here. The landscape here is marvellous. It has more than met my expectations," she said.
"It is also the oldest botanic garden in New Zealand," Miss Auger added.
"In France, we don't speak about native plants. We have local plants, but we're too close to other countries to have native plants like you do here.
"The landscape here is much more beautiful than I expected and the weather is also better here than it is in France at the moment."
Miss Auger returns to France in September and Miss Desfonds in October.
