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Costa Rica Campus - Botanical Garden
Getting to the University of Georgia's new botanical garden is no easy matter. First
there's the trip to Atlanta, then a three-anda-half-hour flight to San Jose, Costa Rica,
followed by a memorably bumpy car ride of equal length.
But at the end of the journey is an inviting student-designed garden at UGA's beautiful
Costa Rica Campus in San Luis. Nestled in the upper slopes of the Tilaran mountain range
and adjacent to the world-famous Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, the region is a
biodiversity "hot spot" and an ideal location for scientific as well as sociocultural
research.
In summer 2003, six UGA landscape architecture students spent about a week on site
developing the garden's master plan with the help of faculty member Gregg Coyle from
UGA's School of Environmental Design.
"The students started from scratch," Coyle said. "They did everything from fieldwork to
the concept for the garden."
Their plan was to convert a five-acre area that had an agricultural plot, a clear-cut
area, some open pasture and forest into a sustainable design that uses native plants and
has low impact on the environment, he said.
Jeff Lewis and Jim Affolter - Director and Director of Research, respectively, at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia - have led the effort to implement the student's plan with the help of UGA Costa Rica General Manager Fabricio Camacho, Director Quint Newcomer, and Garden Curator Lucas Ramirez, and Paul Duncan of UGA's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
And now the new garden - Jardin Botanico de San Luis - is in full bloom.
The garden includes a collection of some 75 medicinal plants and an edible crops demonstration garden as well as several arboretum trails. Photometal labels prepared at the Georgia State Botanical Garden help visitors identify plants in the collections and along the trails. Interpretive signage also is being developed.
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