From Lab Back to Leaf
Our Living Farmacy
Long before medicine came in bottles, our ancestors turned to the living world around them.
Leaves, roots, flowers, bark and seeds were gathered and prepared as teas, oils, salves, tinctures, foods and traditional remedies. This knowledge was carried through families and communities from one generation to the next.
At OM Jungle Medicine, our medicinal garden is part of our living classroom.
Here in the mountains of Guanacaste, Costa Rica, we grow plants that have been valued in traditional medicine around the world. Some are familiar kitchen herbs. Others have histories stretching back hundreds or even thousands of years.
Our Living Farmacy is about remembering this relationship with plants—learning what grows around us, how it has traditionally been used, and how we can bring plant knowledge back into everyday family life.
Many of the photographs below come directly from the plants growing here at OM.
Mugwort
Traditional uses: Digestion • Menstrual support • Relaxation • Dreaming • Moxibustion
Mugwort is an aromatic herb with a long history in European and Asian herbal traditions.
Traditionally used as a bitter digestive herb, mugwort has also been associated with women’s herbal traditions, menstrual support, relaxation and dreaming. It holds an especially important place in traditional East Asian medicine, where dried mugwort is used to make moxa for moxibustion.
Its leaves contain aromatic compounds, flavonoids and other phytochemicals that continue to be studied today.
Vetiver
Traditional uses: Calming • Aromatic medicine • Skin care • Cooling preparations
Vetiver is perhaps best known for its extraordinary fragrant roots.
The roots have been used traditionally in aromatic preparations, cooling drinks and bathing practices, and in some herbal traditions for relaxation and skin care. Vetiver essential oil is prized in perfumery for its deep, earthy aroma.
Below the soil, vetiver develops an enormous root system. This makes it valuable beyond herbalism: it can help stabilize soil, slow erosion and protect land during heavy tropical rains.
Lemongrass
Traditional uses: Digestion • Relaxation • Colds • Fever • Aromatic medicine
Lemongrass is one of the wonderfully simple medicines of the tropical garden.
Its fragrant leaves are commonly prepared as tea and have traditionally been used for digestive discomfort, gas and bloating, relaxation, colds and fever.
The plant’s distinctive citrus fragrance comes largely from aromatic compounds including citral, which has also attracted scientific interest for its biological properties.
Blue Butterfly Pea
Clitoria ternatea
Traditional uses: Memory • Cognitive support • Relaxation • Antioxidant-rich food and tea
Few plants in our garden announce themselves quite like Butterfly Pea.
Its brilliant blue-purple flowers have a long history of use in traditional Asian medicine and food. The plant has traditionally been associated with memory, cognition and calming preparations.
The remarkable colour comes from anthocyanin pigments called ternatins.
Steep the flowers in hot water and the tea becomes an extraordinary blue. Add something acidic—like lime from the garden—and watch it transform toward purple or pink.
Plant medicine can also be beautiful.
Oregano
Traditional uses: Digestion • Respiratory support • Culinary medicine • Antioxidant-rich herb
Oregano reminds us that the boundary between food and medicine has never been particularly clear.
Traditionally used for digestive and respiratory complaints, oregano contains aromatic plant compounds that have demonstrated antioxidant and antimicrobial activity in laboratory research.
It is also simply a beautiful example of something we believe deeply at OM: medicinal plants do not always have to be exotic. Sometimes they are already growing beside the kitchen.
Juanilama
A traditional Costa Rican medicinal plant
Traditional uses: Digestion • Stomach discomfort • Gas • Relaxation • Sleep
Juanilama belongs particularly beautifully on this page because it connects our garden directly to Costa Rican plant knowledge.
Commonly prepared as an aromatic herbal tea, Juanilama has traditionally been used in Costa Rica and elsewhere in Latin America for digestive discomfort, gas, nervous tension and relaxation.
It is one of those plants whose knowledge has lived not only in books, but in gardens, kitchens and families.
Moringa
Moringa oleifera
Traditional uses: Nutritive plant • Food • Antioxidant-rich leaves
Sometimes called the “miracle tree,” moringa has been used as both food and traditional medicine across parts of Africa and Asia and is now grown throughout tropical regions.
Its leaves are unusually nutrient dense and provide protein along with vitamins, minerals and numerous plant compounds. Leaves can be eaten fresh, cooked, dried into powder or prepared in traditional foods and drinks.
Moringa is a wonderful example of the idea behind Our Living Farmacy: food can be part of medicine too.
Passionflower
Passiflora species
Traditional uses: Relaxation • Sleep • Nervous tension • Restlessness
Passionflower is one of the most extraordinary flowers growing on our land.
Different Passiflora species have long histories of traditional use, and certain species are particularly known in Western herbalism for calming preparations.
Passionflower has traditionally been used for nervous tension, restlessness and sleep, and modern research has begun examining some of these uses.
And then there is the flower itself—so intricate that it hardly looks real.
Calendula
Calendula officinalis
Traditional uses: Skin • Minor wounds • Irritated skin • Herbal oils and salves
Calendula is one of the classic plants of the herbal apothecary.
Its flowers have traditionally been infused into oils and incorporated into salves, balms and washes for the skin.
Calendula has a particularly long history of topical use for irritated or damaged skin and minor wounds, and extracts of the plant continue to be investigated for their anti-inflammatory and wound-healing properties.
At Our Living Farmacy, this is exactly the kind of plant we love: beautiful in the garden and useful in the apothecary.
Ginger
Zingiber officinale
Traditional uses: Nausea • Digestion • Circulation • Inflammatory discomfort
Ginger has been valued as food and medicine for thousands of years.
Its underground rhizome contains pungent compounds including gingerols and shogaols.
Among the plants on this page, ginger also has substantial modern research behind some uses—particularly certain forms of nausea. It has additionally been studied for digestive and inflammatory effects.
We grow ginger abundantly in our tropical garden, where the plant itself is every bit as beautiful as the familiar root beneath the soil.
Rosemary
Salvia rosmarinus
Traditional uses: Memory • Concentration • Digestion • Circulation • Hair and scalp preparations
Rosemary has been associated with memory for centuries.
Its intensely aromatic leaves have traditionally been used for digestion, circulation and mental clarity, while rosemary preparations have long been applied externally to the hair, scalp and body.
Modern research has investigated rosemary and its constituents for antioxidant activity as well as possible effects involving cognition and hair growth.
One small branch carries an extraordinary amount of aroma.
Myrrh
Traditional uses: Aromatic medicine • Skin preparations • Oral care • Ceremonial use
Myrrh has one of the oldest relationships with humans of any aromatic plant material.
True myrrh resin from Commiphora species has historically been used in incense, perfumes, oral preparations and traditional medicines across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The plant we call Myrrh in our Costa Rican garden will be identified botanically before we assign it a scientific name, because several different plants can carry the same common name.
That distinction matters to us. Part of returning to plant knowledge is learning exactly which plant is in our hands.
Basil
Ocimum species
Traditional uses: Digestion • Gas and bloating • Culinary medicine • Aromatic support
Basil is another reminder that the kitchen and the apothecary were once much closer together.
Different basil species have been used throughout the world for digestive complaints and as aromatic traditional medicines. Basil leaves also contain numerous phenolic and aromatic compounds with antioxidant activity.
We use and grow basil as food, but its traditional medicinal story deserves a place in the garden too.
Mint
Mentha species
Traditional uses: Digestion • Gas • Nausea • Cooling • Respiratory comfort
Crush a mint leaf between your fingers and its medicine introduces itself through aroma.
Mint species have long been used for digestive discomfort, gas and nausea and as cooling aromatic herbs.
Peppermint in particular has been studied extensively for its effects on the gastrointestinal tract, although the exact properties vary according to the species and preparation.
Mint spreads enthusiastically in our garden—and we’re happy to let it.
Citronella
Traditional uses: Aromatic plant • Insect-repelling preparations • Traditional topical uses
Citronella is one of the aromatic grasses particularly suited to tropical life.
Its strongly scented leaves contain volatile oils widely used in natural insect-repelling preparations. Citronella has also been incorporated into traditional aromatic and topical preparations.
Growing it ourselves allows us to work with the whole plant rather than simply buying an isolated fragrance.
Turmeric
Curcuma longa
Traditional uses: Digestion • Food medicine • Inflammatory conditions • Traditional skin preparations
The brilliant golden rhizome of turmeric has been used as food, dye and medicine for centuries.
Turmeric is particularly important in South Asian traditional medicine. Its best-known constituents are the curcuminoids, including curcumin, which have been extensively investigated for anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity.
For us, turmeric is another perfect example of medicine that begins in the soil and ends in the kitchen.
Hibiscus
Traditional uses: Cooling tea • Cardiovascular support • Antioxidant-rich beverage
Hibiscus produces one of the most recognizable herbal drinks in the tropics.
The deep red preparation commonly known as hibiscus tea is typically made from the fleshy calyces of Hibiscus sabdariffa. It is rich in anthocyanins and other plant compounds.
Unlike many traditional herbal uses, hibiscus has also been investigated in human clinical research, particularly for its potential effects on blood pressure.
Tart, refreshing and brilliantly coloured, it is both food and traditional medicine.
A Living Farmacy
Our garden will never really be finished.
Plants are added. Seeds are shared. Knowledge arrives through elders, Indigenous communities, herbalists, farmers, visitors and our own experience of tending the land.
Our intention is not simply to create a collection of medicinal plants.
It is to help rebuild a relationship.
To know what is growing outside our door.
To learn the plants our grandparents knew.
To teach our children where medicine once came from.
To grow food and medicine together.
To exchange knowledge within community.
And perhaps, little by little, to move from lab back to leaf.
Welcome to Our Living Farmacy at OM Jungle Medicine.
This garden is presented for education and the preservation and sharing of traditional plant knowledge. Traditional use does not mean that every use has been clinically established, and plants with the same common name can represent different species. Correct botanical identification matters when plants are prepared for medicinal use.
