The Giardino Botanico di Oropa is a nature preserve and botanical garden

Botanical garden

A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...

 located at an altitude of 1200 meters in Oropa, a town about 12 kilometers northwest of Biella

Biella

Biella is a town and comune in the northern Italian region of Piemonte, the capital of the province of the same name, with some 45,800 inhabitants as of 2009. It is located about 80 km northeast of Turin and about 80 km west-northwest of Milan.It lies in the foothills of the Alps,...

, Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It is open daily except Mondays in the warmer months.

The garden covers several acres either side of the Torrente Oropa, and is managed by the World Wide Fund for Nature

World Wide Fund for Nature

The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...

 for Biella, primarily as a nature preserve, but also with mountain plants from around the world. The majority of the site is indigenous beech

Beech

Beech is a genus of ten species of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia and North America.-Habit:...

 woodlands with many herbaceous perennials and small shrubs, including blueberry

Blueberry

Blueberries are flowering plants of the genus Vaccinium with dark-blue berries and are perennial...

 and rhododendron

Rhododendron

Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...

. The garden also contains lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

s and moss

Moss

Mosses are small, soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm tall, though some species are much larger. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems...

es, as well as Campanula barbata, Campanula excisa Schleicher (the garden's symbol), Gentiana purpurea

Gentiana purpurea

Gentiana purpurea is a plant of genus Gentiana. Flowers July to August . The root is sometimes used in the manufacture of gentian bitters- External links :*....

, Lilium martagon

Lilium martagon

Lilium martagon is a species of lily. It has a widespread native region extending from central Europe east through northern Asia to Mongolia and Korea. Several subspecies have been named. Horticulturally it is in Division 9, It is stem-rooting, growing between 1m and 2m tall...

, Lonicera nigra, Prenanthes purpurea, and Rosa pendulina.