The Alpine Botanical Garden of Campo Imperatore was founded by the botanist Vincenzo Rivera in 1952. The idea was to study the variety of plant life which grew on the mountain massif of the Gran Sasso. There are none of the usual flowering varieties in this botanical garden; instead there are hundreds of grass species and very rare species almost impossible to find in nature including false bilberry, greater gentian and the Appennine edelweiss.
