Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca: Architecture, Landscape, and Cultural Reclamation

The Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca (Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca), situated on the grounds of the former Santo Domingo monastery in the heart of Oaxaca City, presents a compelling case study in how landscape architecture can serve as an instrument of cultural reclamation and ecological storytelling. The site, once a military base during post-revolutionary Mexico, was closed to the public for over eight decades. Its transformation into a botanical garden during the late 1990s reflects a complex layering of colonial, indigenous, and contemporary spatial narratives.

Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca Technical Information

• Architect / Landscape Designer^1-2: Luis Zárate
• Artistic Direction and Conceptual Initiator: Francisco Toledo
• Location: Former Convent of Santo Domingo, Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, Mexico
• Site Area: Approx. 2.3 hectares (23,000 m²)
• Project Years: 1994 – 1999
• Photographs: Flickr Users, See Caption Details

The architecture had to disappear so the landscape could tell the story.

– Luis Zárate

Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca Photographs

Architectural and Landscape Design Strategy

Set within Oaxaca’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed historic center, the garden lies adjacent to the Baroque Santo Domingo Church and Convent, an urban node historically central to ecclesiastical power. The decision to reclaim this space for public and educational purposes followed years of civic resistance to development proposals that would have erased its historical and ecological potential. The project became not only a botanical initiative but a spatial articulation of Oaxacan identity, memory, and autonomy.

The garden’s development was led by architect Luis Zárate and profoundly shaped by the vision of Oaxacan artist and activist Francisco Toledo, whose influence ensured that the project would transcend conventional botanical typologies. Rather than replicate Western models of botanical classification, the design integrates ecological, cultural, and spatial systems to foreground the relationships between plants, place, and people.

The spatial structure of the garden deliberately engages with the formal language of both colonial and pre-Hispanic architecture. Pathways are organized axially in reference to monastic cloisters, while garden rooms recall the ceremonial courtyards of Mesoamerican urbanism. Enclosure, rhythm, and sequence are key ordering principles; each zone unfolds through carefully articulated thresholds, framed views, and controlled transitions of scale and texture.

The landscape architecture strikes a balance between rigorous formality and ecological authenticity. Terraces, retaining walls, and irrigation channels both structure the site and interpret vernacular hydraulic infrastructure. The intervention prioritizes didactic clarity over ornamental landscaping, highlighting ecological processes, material histories, and indigenous knowledge systems.

Botanical and Spatial Taxonomy

The plant collection is rooted in a biocultural curatorial strategy, emphasizing the ecological diversity of Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s most biologically rich states, and its cultural uses of plant species. Rather than grouping plants taxonomically, the garden arranges them by region, altitude, and cultural function, revealing deep entanglements between local ecosystems and indigenous lifeways.

This spatial taxonomy is reinforced by architectural elements that define microclimates and organize visitor movement. Cacti rise against adobe walls, tropical hardwoods shade stone-paved paths, and medicinal herbs populate sunken beds edged in reclaimed stone. These elements are not decorative but pedagogical; they form a living archive of regional botany and its spatial implications.

Materiality plays a central role in the design’s legibility. Local sandstone, volcanic rock, and earthen plasters articulate the continuity between built and natural systems. The textures of the garden, whether the rough volcanic boulders or the softness of wild grasses, invite haptic perception and establish a grounded dialogue between architecture and landscape.

The garden had to speak of Oaxaca, of its land, its people, and its memory. It is not just about plants, but about everything they represent.

– Francisco Toledo

Ethnobotanical Garden Theoretical Dimensions

The Jardín Etnobotánico has been widely recognized as an architectural and political statement. It offers a radical alternative to both the privatization of public land and the technocratic logic of global botanical institutions. Here, landscape is not aestheticized nature but a medium for telling stories of conquest, survival, and regeneration.

From a theoretical perspective, the project engages with questions of authorship, temporality, and territorial knowledge. It operates at the intersection of architecture, ethnobotany, and museography, presenting a hybrid typology where the garden becomes a space of memory, pedagogy, and resistance. The project’s open-endedness, its refusal to be “finished”, also challenges static definitions of architectural completeness, favoring growth, decay, and seasonal variability as legitimate spatial expressions.

Its influence extends beyond Oaxaca. The garden has become a reference point for contemporary Latin American landscape practice, particularly in contexts of postcolonial urbanism and ecological vulnerability. It is frequently cited in academic discourse for its integration of social activism, traditional knowledge, and spatial design, serving as a model for how architecture can function both symbolically and materially in service of the commons.

Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca Plans

Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca Image Gallery

About Luis Zárate

Luis Zárate is a Mexican architect based in Oaxaca, known for his work that bridges contemporary design with cultural and ecological sensitivity. He gained recognition as the lead architect of the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca, where his architectural restraint and emphasis on landscape allowed the site’s historical, botanical, and territorial narratives to emerge. Zárate’s practice reflects a commitment to context-driven design, often engaging with public and civic projects that highlight regional identity and environmental stewardship.

Credits and Additional Notes

1. Collaborating Experts: Alejandro de Ávila Blomberg, Ignacio Bernal

2. Botanical Advisors: Oaxaca Institute of Ecology; National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); various Indigenous knowledge holders 

3. Client: Government of the State of Oaxaca, originally under Fideicomiso, formed with Banamex and PRO-OAX until 2006 

4. Supporting Institutions: PRO-OAX; Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes; Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH); Santo Domingo Cultural Center; Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI)