Lankester Botanical Garden

Charles Lankester, an English coffee planter and amateur botanist, began collecting orchids at his property near Cartago in the early twentieth century, and the garden he assembled passed to the University of Costa Rica in 1973 and has since become a research centre as well as a public garden. The collection holds several thousand orchid taxa, with the greatest number in flower between February and May, along with bromeliads, aroids, palms, cacti, bamboo and a Japanese garden, across around ten hectares at eighteen hundred metres in the Cartago valley. Glasshouses hold the more delicate species. The garden publishes taxonomic research and describes new species regularly.

History

Charles H. Lankester, who had spent time in Costa Rica from 1900, moved there from England in 1910 and began collecting orchids, sending specimens to Kew for identification. In 1924 he bought Las Cóncavas, a coffee farm near Cartago with a large lagoon that drew migratory birds, and beside it kept an area he called El Silvestre for orchids and other tropical plants; in 1955 he sold the rest of the farm and kept only El Silvestre. After his death in 1969 his daughter Dorothy sold it in 1973 to the University of Costa Rica, on condition that it remain a botanical garden, with funds raised at the urging of Rafael Lucas Rodríguez from the Costa Rican Orchid Society, the American Orchid Society and the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust; Dora Emilia Mora de Retana became its first director in 1979, and in 1984 the university started a course in orchidology here (Wikipedia, Lankester Botanical Garden).

Highlights

• The orchid collection - the thousands of taxa, at their peak in spring.
• The glasshouses - the delicate species under cover.
• Bromeliads and aroids - the other epiphyte collections.
• The Japanese garden - the laid-out section within the grounds.

When to go

February to May for the main orchid flowering, which is the reason to time a visit; the garden is open year round and other collections carry it. Mornings are best before afternoon cloud and rain.

Practical notes

Orchid flowering is seasonal and outside the peak many plants are not in bloom. The garden is modest in size. The Cartago valley is often cloudy and wet in the afternoon. Labelling depth varies.

Nearby

Cartago lies west; Irazu volcano is north.

Key facts