Green travel guide

Costa Rica Botanical Gardens, Orchids and Seed Banks: Who Keeps Them Alive

Costa Rica's best botanical gardens are working science centers: the University of Costa Rica's Lankester Botanical Garden in Cartago studies orchids and other epiphytes, the Wilson Botanical Garden near San Vito sits inside a forest research station, and CATIE in Turrialba keeps a seed bank and living coffee and cacao collections. All three can be visited, and the most rewarding way to see them is with a guide who explains where the plants came from and why they're kept.

By Pura-Verde.com Editors · Published October 30, 2026 · Last checked October 30, 2026

Best for

Plant lovers, families, birders and anyone curious about orchids, palms, seeds and the science behind them.

Where

Lankester Botanical Garden in Dulce Nombre de Cartago; Wilson Botanical Garden at Las Cruces, about 5 km south of San Vito in Coto Brus; CATIE in Turrialba.

Lankester

More than 3,000 plant species on 11 hectares, with a focus on orchids and other epiphytes, run by the University of Costa Rica since 1973.

Seed bank

CATIE says its germplasm bank, started in 1976, holds about 6,200 samples of crops important to Mesoamerica.

Good to know

Never collect seeds, flowers or cuttings; buy orchids only from legal, nursery-grown sources.

Ask before you go

Current visiting hours, whether a guided walk needs booking, and which areas are research-only.

An orchid can look like something invented for a fairy tale. To a botanist, it's also a puzzle: where it grows, who pollinates it, which fungus helps its dust-fine seed sprout, and what it's actually related to. In Costa Rica, a small group of scientists and gardeners spend their careers on those puzzles, and you can walk through the places where they work.

Costa Rica's botanical gardens are more than a pretty stop on a rainy afternoon. The best ones combine living plant collections with research, record-keeping and education. Scientists identify species and track where they grow. Gardeners and greenhouse crews keep thousands of fussy plants alive. Educators turn all of that into something a nine-year-old can get excited about. This guide covers the gardens and collections that do serious plant conservation, the people behind them, and how to visit in a way that respects the work.

Lankester Botanical Garden: Costa Rica's orchid research center

The Lankester Botanical Garden (Jardín Botánico Lankester) in Dulce Nombre de Cartago, about an hour's drive from San José depending on traffic, is run by the University of Costa Rica. It began as the private collection of Charles H. Lankester, an English naturalist who moved to Costa Rica in 1910 and began collecting orchids on a former coffee farm near Cartago. After his death in 1969, the property was sold to the university in 1973 on the condition that it stay a botanical garden, with donations from orchid societies and a horticultural trust helping fund the purchase, according to the garden's history as summarized on Wikipedia.

Today, the garden's collections page describes more than 3,000 plant species across 11 hectares of planted areas, greenhouses and secondary forest, with international recognition for its epiphytes, especially orchids. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants without feeding off them, taking water and nutrients from rain, mist and debris. There's also a Japanese garden, a gift from the Japanese government that opened in 2009.

The university later upgraded Lankester from an experimental station to a full research center. Its official announcement names botanist Adam Karremans as the center's first director, and he's still listed as director in the current staff directory.

The scientists and gardeners behind the orchids

The same directory shows how many skills a serious garden needs. Diego Bogarín Chaves is a researcher and edits the garden's scientific journal, Lankesteriana. Franco Pupulin, Gustavo Rojas Alvarado, Isler Chinchilla Alvarado and Pablo Bolaños Villegas are listed as researchers, and Melania Fernández Campos coordinates research.

Their work is careful, slow and rarely glamorous. In 2020, the garden reported that Karremans and Bogarín placed an orchid in a brand-new genus after finding that its features didn't fit any existing group. They named it Pupulinia, honoring Pupulin, an Italian-born botanist who has studied Costa Rican orchids for about 40 years. The species, first described from the Ecuadorian Amazon, also grows in Costa Rica. The interesting part isn't the new name. It's the method behind it: detailed comparisons, preserved specimens and evidence that other scientists can check.

None of that research would survive without the horticulture team. Jorge Warner Pineda heads the horticulture department, Giovanny Meza coordinates the greenhouses and Juan Carlos Cervantes coordinates the outdoor green areas, with a crew of gardeners listed by name. They're the people who know what an orchid needs during a damp Cartago week, how to stop pests spreading through a scientific collection, and which plants refuse to be propagated. Daniel Rodríguez García leads environmental education, which is how school groups and visitors learn why a strange aerial root matters.

If you join a guided walk, ask your guide about the greenhouse work. The answers are often more memorable than any label.

What makes a living plant collection useful to science

A rare plant in a pot isn't automatically a conservation success. A collection becomes scientifically valuable when each plant comes with reliable records: where it was collected, how it was acquired, what it is, and what reference material backs that up.

Lankester says most of its plants with reliable origin data are pressed and kept in its herbarium, with records in a database. From that material come other reference collections: flowers preserved in liquid, dried tissue for genetic analysis, seeds and pollinia (the waxy pollen packets orchids produce). Researchers use them to compare species and work out relationships you can't see on a garden walk.

Botanists also separate two kinds of conservation. In-situ conservation protects a species where it lives, along with its pollinators, fungi, soil and water. Ex-situ conservation keeps living plants, seeds or tissue somewhere else, as backup and for research and teaching. Both matter, and one doesn't replace the other. A greenhouse can safeguard an orchid, but it can't stand in for the cloud forest the orchid evolved in.

Wilson Botanical Garden and Las Cruces: plants in a working landscape

Down in Coto Brus, near the Panama border, the Wilson Botanical Garden sits inside the Las Cruces Research Station, about 5 km south of San Vito. It's run by the Organization for Tropical Studies, a nonprofit consortium of universities and research institutions. The field-station profile lists Emilce Ramírez as station director and describes a garden known for its palms, tropical plants and endangered species, with overnight lodging, trails and education programs.

The garden's story starts with Robert and Catherine Wilson, nursery owners from Miami who moved here in the early 1960s and planted on old coffee and pasture land. A travel guide last updated in August 2025 says they sold the property to OTS in 1973 and stayed on as managers for several years. It puts the garden at about 10 hectares inside roughly 365 hectares of station land, around 200 hectares of it primary forest.

Las Cruces asks a different question from Lankester. It's surrounded by farms and forest fragments, so researchers here look at what a garden and reserve can do for plants, birds and pollinators in a changing agricultural landscape. A rich collection doesn't mean the forest around it is secure. Seed dispersal, pollination, invasive species and connections between forest patches all have to be studied.

It's a long drive from San José, so most visitors combine it with a night or two in the area. Guided walks need booking in advance. For more on stations like this, see our guide to biological research stations in Costa Rica.

CATIE: seed banks and living coffee and cacao collections

If you want to see a seed bank, go to Turrialba. CATIE, the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, has kept a germplasm bank (a library of crop seeds and plants) since 1976. In a 2023 AFP report, CATIE described about 6,200 samples from 125 species and 57 countries, around 90% of them from Mesoamerica, with one of the world's largest squash collections. Seeds that tolerate drying are stored in a cold room at about minus 20°C, where they can stay viable for decades. William Solano, a CATIE plant genetic resources researcher, explained the work in that report.

Crops whose seeds can't be dried and frozen, like many fruit trees, coffee and cacao, have to be kept as living plants in the field. CATIE says its International Cacao Collection dates to 1944 and its International Coffee Collection to 1949, the coffee collection holding about 2,000 accessions. The campus's Dr. Jorge León Arguedas Botanical Garden offers visits to the coffee and cacao collections and the seed bank, plus birding, night and bicycle tours. Check the garden's page for current tour options and booking. For farms where you can taste the results, see our guide to sustainable coffee and cacao in Costa Rica.

Why orchids are hard to bank

It's tempting to imagine plant conservation as a packet of seeds in a freezer. Orchids show why it isn't that simple. Their seeds are tiny and carry almost no food reserves, so in the wild most depend on specific fungi to germinate. That makes them fascinating to propagate in a lab and hard to save in bulk.

That's why serious collections rely on a mix: living plants with good records, seeds where they can be stored, tissue for genetic study and, most of all, protected wild habitat. The useful questions about any collection are whether the material was legally obtained, whether it represents the species' real genetic and geographic range, and whether it's linked to a wider conservation plan. A garden that simply piles up rare plants isn't necessarily doing conservation.

How to visit a botanical garden well

• Follow one plant's story. Instead of rushing past every flower, pick one and ask where it grows wild and what threatens it.
• Look beyond flowers. Fungi, mosses, bromeliads, soil, water and the tiny insects that pollinate many orchids are all part of the system.
• Take a guided walk. Guides and horticulturists explain things no sign can.
• Leave everything where it is. Never collect seeds, flowers or cuttings from a garden or protected area without authorization.
• Buy plants carefully. Legally propagated orchids from reputable nurseries are fine. Wild-collected orchids are not, and taking plants out of the country brings export rules into play.
• For kids, try a question like "Which plant is an epiphyte, and where does it get water?" It beats a hunt to find and touch a rare orchid.

More gardens and green spaces to explore

Smaller gardens around the country are worth a look too. Monteverde has orchid gardens that help visitors notice how many tiny species grow in the highlands; ask each one where its plants come from. In San José, Spirogyra Butterfly Garden in San Francisco de Goicoechea pairs a butterfly garden with a wooded walking trail, about 10 minutes on foot from downtown. For more butterfly and pollinator sites, see our guide to butterfly gardens and pollinators.

Gardens also connect to bigger stories. In May 2026, the Japanese embassy planted Hiroshima survivor trees at the University of Costa Rica, with seeds germinated with Lankester's help. In Curridabat, residents planned a pocket forest of 1,540 native plants. And at Reserva Conchal, a bee-genetics pilot shows how much plants and pollinators depend on each other. If native trees are your interest, our reforestation guide covers the nurseries growing them, and the Pura-Verde map lists places you can visit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best botanical garden in Costa Rica?

For orchids and plant science, the University of Costa Rica's Lankester Botanical Garden in Cartago is the best known, with more than 3,000 species. The Wilson Botanical Garden near San Vito is the top choice for palms and forest, and CATIE in Turrialba is the place to see a seed bank.

How far is Lankester Botanical Garden from San José?

It's in Dulce Nombre de Cartago, a few kilometers past the city of Cartago, roughly 45 minutes to an hour from San José by car depending on traffic. It's an easy half-day trip and pairs well with the Orosi Valley or Cartago's old town.

When is the best time to see orchids in Costa Rica?

Something is in flower year-round, and many visitors find the dry season, roughly February to April, especially rewarding. Ask the garden what's flowering before you go.

Can I take an orchid home from Costa Rica?

Not from the wild. Collecting wild orchids is not allowed, and all orchids are covered by international trade rules. If you want a plant, buy a legally propagated one from a reputable nursery and check the export and import paperwork for both countries first.

Does Costa Rica have a seed bank?

Yes. CATIE in Turrialba has run a germplasm bank since 1976, holding about 6,200 crop samples, plus living coffee and cacao collections. Its botanical garden offers tours that include the seed bank.

Is the Wilson Botanical Garden worth the trip?

If you love palms, birds or forest trails, yes. It's remote, near San Vito in southern Costa Rica, so plan an overnight stay and book a guided walk ahead of time.

Sources

1. Lankester Botanical Garden: Colecciones
2. Lankester Botanical Garden: Directorio
3. Lankester Botanical Garden: Jardín Botánico Lankester ahora es Centro de Investigación
4. Lankester Botanical Garden: new orchid genus Pupulinia (October 2020)
5. Wikipedia: Lankester Botanical Garden
6. OBFS: Las Cruces Research Station (OTS)
7. Two Weeks in Costa Rica: Wilson Botanical Garden at Las Cruces Biological Station (updated August 2025)
8. El Observador (AFP): Costa Rica guarda un tesoro de semillas en Turrialba (July 2023)
9. La Nación: Embajada del Japón sembró en Costa Rica árboles sobrevivientes de Hiroshima (May 2026)
10. CATIE: 75 years of the International Coffee Collection (November 2024)
11. CATIE: Jardín Botánico Dr. Jorge León Arguedas
12. Spirogyra Butterfly Garden: official site

We checked these pages when we last updated this guide. We didn't interview the people named; their roles and words come from the sources above.