Shaping the land of our Spiritual Sanctuary

Nosara, Costa Rica. It’s been over 6 months since our last visit here and we arrived in Nosara late afternoon after a long drive from our search for plants in the towns of Alajuela and Arenal.

We have a lot planned for the next week. Day 1 and 2 will be spent marking out where the 110 plants and trees we just acquired in Alajuela and Arenal will go. Day 3 will be spent overseeing the clearing of the northern border of the property and also the installation of 340 meters of new fence line. Day 4 and 5 the planting of trees. Day 6 will be spent marking out the pathways of the main garden section. Day 7 will be spent carving out the pathways with a bobcat, creating 3 big mounds for the gardens and a big compost pile. Day 8 – collapse in a heap! And so another insane idea of mine begins.

The summer that had just passed was one of the hottest and driest in many years and unfortunately quite a few of the trees we had planted died. We lost about 15 of the 148 trees that we planted. All of them burnt to a crisp. The rest were thriving and some them had even more than doubled their height.

We spent the first two days marking out where all the trees would go. We also used this time to mark out the trees that we were planning to pull out on the northern border of the property as well. Once this was done we had a tractor come in to grade the land. It was a big project and there was at least 5 dump truck worth of organic debri that had to be hauled away to another part of the property.

Day 3 began with a 5:30am start. Our new fence line was going in and over 100 trees were arriving. Big day. We’ve managed to acquire some special tropical fruit trees, spice and medicinal plants that I was very enthusiastic about getting into the ground to add to last year’s planting of 148 trees. Among the trees planted were 3 giant Kapok trees (they’re small now) and 2 more Cortez Amarillo’s that will be covered in yellow flowers as pictured below. We also put in a Guanacaste (Enterolobium cyclocarpum) tree, which happens to be the national tree of Costa Rica, which will grow to be massive one day. Plus a few more Delonix Regia with it’s flamboyant red flowers around our future shrine to the Hindu deity of Ganesha. Our Noni trees pictured below are doing super well and full of fruits. The vision of our spiritual sanctuary is slowly manifesting with a lot of love, willpower and persistence.

We also collected all the greenery from the trees we cut down and layered them with a load of horse manure to create a massive pile of compost for use next year. Part of our not wasting anything policy.

On days 6 and 7 we got the bobcat to carve out 1,580 feet of pathways in the main section of our botanical garden. This meandering pathway will one day lead guests through the gardens to various shrines and spots for spiritual practice. The pathways will allow us also to know where exactly to plant trees in our next planting phase in June of 2016.

We put together this 3-minute video that summarizes our week of hard work. We hope you enjoy it. A spiritual sanctuary is in the making.

Acquiring a couple Kapok trees for our friend Brennan who runs Cocobolo Nursery in Liberia.

Keeping track of all the trees we are putting in the ground is one of the biggest tasks.

The new fence line about to go up.

Our expert local team built 340 meters of fence line in a day.

One of three garden mounds that we created.

Transplanting a Kapok tree on the property. We found this one in the forest so decided to move it to the front driveway. It will grown one day to be at least 150 feet tall.

The gorgeous Cortez Amarillo. We’ve got 3 of these on the property. This photo was taken on a local road.