Giardino botanico alpino di Castel Savoia

In the park of Queen Margherita's castle, at about 1,400 metres above Gressoney-Saint-Jean, a rocky garden gathers alpine plants from the Monte Rosa slopes and mountain ranges across the world. Its beds include edelweiss, gentians and Martagon lilies beneath the glacier.

Why it matters

Opened in 1990, the garden belongs to the twentieth-century tradition of alpine gardens in Valle d'Aosta and lies within the grounds of Castel Savoia. That pairing is what makes it distinctive: a scientific and decorative planting of high-altitude species framed by the towers of Castel Savoia and the Monte Rosa chain beyond. The garden brings alpine botany into the historic setting of the royal estate.

What to notice

The beds are rocky rather than formal, mimicking the scree and cliff ledges where alpine plants naturally root. The star is the stella alpina — edelweiss — long the emblem of these mountains, growing alongside species chosen both for their ornamental value and for their local presence: the rusty-leaved alpenrose (rododendro ferrugineo) that reddens the slopes in early summer, the pink Martagon lily (giglio martagone), and epilobio, the willowherb common along paths and the banks of the Lys. There are double buttercups (botton d'oro), columbines, several kinds of houseleek, gentians traditionally noted for healing properties, and saxifrages wedged into crevices exactly as they grow in the wild. The garden faces the Monte Rosa massif, with views of the Lyskamm glacier from its beds.

Context and history

The garden belongs to the estate of the castle, built between 1899 and 1904 for Queen Margherita of Savoy. The Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta acquired the castle in 1981, and the botanical garden opened in the park in 1990. Its late inauguration placed it at the end of a regional tradition of alpine gardens devoted to conserving fragile high-mountain flora, and it deliberately mixes local species from the Lys valley with counterparts from other mountain regions of the world, presenting forms adapted to similar high-mountain conditions.