The Botanical Garden
Up to date, Defensores has gathered and is working with a group of national and international experts in botanical gardens to describe the main aspects of development of the project. This group consists of architects, botanists, and academicians that for now have managed to describe the different use zones and a preliminary development plan of the Botanical Garden.
The group has decided to emphasize Ethnobotany in Guatemala and that the architectural designs of different infrastructures and connectivity lines of the different botanical families revolve around the history of the Guatemalan flora from the point of view of its richness, its traditional culinary, medicinal, cultural, and forest use, and recently the importance of the agro-industrial crops. Our origin based on the corn and its predecessor the “teocintle” will be the beginning of the design in a world full of uses and importance of the Guatemalan flora.
The process of planning includes in its development the assignment of spaces and lines of work in investigation, environmental education, use of germplasm, genetic banks, herbology, species propagation, cloning banks, hydroelectricity museum, and, of course, the visiting area with the most important and representative collections of Guatemala.
A lot of effort has been made to collect the necessary funds in order to start carrying out the development plan of the Botanical Garden and be able to open it for the public in a medium term, expecting that the National Botanical Garden may be recognized locally and internationally because of its design characteristics, its representation of the biological richness, for its flora investigation and education center, and as a reference in relation to germplasm and Guatemalan herbology.