The Green Ark Foundation
Institution Code:
BGCI Member: No
About the The Green Ark Foundation
Located in Santa Barbara de Heredia, Costa Rica, on a beautiful eight-hectare property, The Ark Ethnobotanical Garden is the heart of The Green Ark Foundation. The Garden started in 1991 as a producing fresh herb farm with a botanical garden collection in the center that grew over the next 20 years to be what it is today; a medicinal plant repository and a place to learning about the medicinal, culinary and commercial uses of plants. Our founders’ dream to educate about the use and benefits of plants to improve the life and well-being of the planet and ourselves, began in India where he served as a Peace Corp volunteer. During his time there, Harve Thomas (Tommy) began collecting and learning about the many properties of herbs and plants for all living creatures. In 1987 he moved to Costa Rica where he continued to collect botanical species as well as start a very successful herb sale and export company. Upon the sale of his company in 2015, Thomas created the Green Ark Foundation (2017) and opened the ethnobotanical garden to the public as a place of learning and being one with nature.
Our mission is to share the ancestral knowledge that is sadly being lost along with the biodiversity that sustains it, therefore we aim to educate on the use and benefits of plants to improve the life and well-being of the planet and ourselves. When visiting the garden, learning starts with a visit to our thematic ethnobotanical garden terraces- a Medicinal Garden, a Culinary Garden, a Tropical Food Garden (Milpa), an Essential Oils Garden, and a Natural Colorants Garden-. A newly built Victorian greenhouse is home to an Orchid collection and opposite a flowering tree pathway leads to a Sacred (entheogens) Garden, two fruit orchards and a tropical flowering ornamental garden bordering a small creek and a soothing bamboo trail. Our potting area and nurseries with more than 300 species are also part of the tour of our botanical garden as is our new restaurant, The Ark, where a tasting menu of five plates prepared by our chef with ingredients sourced in the early morning from our garden.
Workshops and educational courses: We offer a large variety of workshops and educational courses to visitors and students on the commercial uses of plants such as medicinal plant preparations, essential oil extraction, alcohol tinctures, food dehydration, natural colorant extraction, preparation of plant-based fungicides, insecticides, and repellents, worm composting, organic fertilizers, mushroom cultivation, tree grafting, orchid growing and farm to table cooking, among others. We are currently setting up an online course platform to continue educating and sharing our knowledge about plants and their uses.
Main Address:
The Green Ark Foundation
Apdo 298-3009
Santa Barbara de Heredia
40401 Costa Rica
Telephone: + 506 2269 4849
Fax:
URL: https://www.theark.green/
Primary Email: mcoffey@theark.green