A forest from the 19th century
In the past, the summit ridges of the Petit Luberon were essentially composed of large lawns and a few woods. The shepherds used to use it to make their flocks of sheep graze. In 1861, during the Second Empire, an inspector of Water and Forests launched an ambitious afforestation programme. He introduced seeds of Atlas cedars harvested on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, in the heart of the Algerian Atlas Mountains.
These first trees reached maturity in 1920. In the 1930s, the cedar grove occupied an area of 60 hectares. After a violent fire in 1952, which only spared part of the plantation, the cedars formed a vast forest of about 250 hectares, which flourishes mainly on the summit ridge and colonises the more humid ubac (north slope).
