In the late 1980s, deep in the forests outside Bukittinggi in western Sumatra, Alan Carle went looking for a plant. Nine people in the surrounding villages had been killed by tigers that year. The locals would not go in. Alan went anyway, wearing a Chinese mask on the back of his head, trusting the rumour that a tiger will not attack something it believes is watching it. He got his plant and came home.
A life in the field
That story is not unusual for Alan Carle. Over 45 years and more than 100 collecting expeditions across 40 countries, he has walked into the barrel of a rifle during a civil war in Guatemala, contracted malaria more times than he cares to remember, and been confronted by armed groups on multiple continents. He has met Pygmies, canoed alongside pink river dolphins in Brazil, and tracked plants through the forests of Borneo, Gabon, and the Central African Republic.
He did all of it in pursuit of fruit.
Not the familiar rows of mangoes and papayas at a market stall, but the extraordinary, endangered, often entirely unknown plants that rainforest cultures around the world have relied on for food, medicine, dye, fibre, and shelter for thousands of years. Plants that are disappearing faster than they can be named. Plants that most of the world will never know existed.
Alan and his wife Susan, New York State born and Australia adopted since 1970, made it their life’s work to find them, grow them, and save them from disappearing without record.
The result is the Botanical Ark, a private ethno-botanical garden near Mossman in Tropical North Queensland, neighbouring the World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest, that holds more than 3,000 species collected from across the tropical world. It is, as it has often been described, a Noah’s Ark of useful plants.
It is also, now, the source of Ever Bloomfield’s garden.
How it began
The idea that would become the Botanical Ark took root in the late 1970s, when Alan and Susan read a speech by the American botanist Dr Peter Raven warning that a significant proportion of all life on Earth could be lost within a generation if deforestation continued unchecked. The Carles read that report and felt the weight of it personally. They decided to do something about it.
In 1978, with backpacks and not much else, they set off on an eleven-month journey following the fruiting season across the Pacific, through Central America, and into the Amazon. They returned to Australia with a newborn baby and more than eighty exotic plant species. It was the beginning.
By 1982, they had purchased a piece of eroded, treeless land in the Whyanbeel Valley, a former cattle property with compacted soil, no shade, and little apparent promise. They dug out rocks, introduced millions of earthworms to rebuild the topsoil, and began planting. The expeditions continued. The garden grew. What was once a bare paddock is today an eight-hectare living collection of some of the rarest cultivated plants on Earth.
Alan founded the Rare Fruit Council of Australia in 1979, drawing together growers and enthusiasts who shared his conviction that the tropical world had far more to offer than Australian supermarkets suggested. At its height, the council had 1,200 members. The expeditions continued feeding it, and feeding the Botanical Ark.
What each plant carries
The Botanical Ark holds more than 500 endangered fruit and nut species. Behind every one is a story, and behind the story is a place.
The jackfruit collection runs to twenty varieties, some sourced from relatives of wild species found in Borneo. The mangosteen, notoriously difficult to grow outside its native range, thrives here, alongside a close relative called the mundu that produces exceptional yields twice a year. Durians, Garcinia species, Baccaurea varieties that most botanists have never held in their hands. A close relative of cacao from South America. An Amazonian cousin of the Brazil nut. A wild relative of jackfruit from the jungles of Borneo.
Breadfruit, which Alan considers one of the most significant food plants in existence: a single tree, he notes, can sustain a family’s carbohydrate needs for an entire year. Bixa orellana, or achiote, whose seed pods produce one of the world’s most widely used natural food dyes, familiar on every supermarket shelf, though almost nobody knows where it comes from. Clove, which has served as both spice and local anaesthetic in traditional cultures for centuries.
Each of these plants arrived at the Botanical Ark via an expedition, a negotiation with a traditional landowner, a careful legal process through quarantine, years of patience waiting for the soil and climate to respond. They are the material record of a life spent paying attention.
Alan has described his relationship with traditional knowledge holders overseas with characteristic directness: you need their permission before you can collect anything. His approach has always been one of collaboration and respect, working with Indigenous communities to understand what a plant is, what it means, how it is used, and what it takes to keep it alive.
What Alan is bringing to Ever Bloomfield
Alan Carle is now working closely with Ever Bloomfield to plant out the lodge’s kitchen and botanical garden, bringing decades of expertise, a deep knowledge of what grows in this specific landscape, and direct access to the Botanical Ark’s extraordinary collection of edible and botanical species.
The garden at Ever Bloomfield will be functional, specific, and deeply connected to this place, planted with varieties selected for the Daintree Coast’s particular climate, soil, and context. Many of the plants will be unfamiliar even to experienced growers. Some will be species that have never before been cultivated in a lodge or restaurant garden context anywhere in Australia.
The lodge’s chef will work directly with what the garden produces, creating dishes built around ingredients that guests will encounter nowhere else. This goes beyond farm to table as a concept, into something more specific and more rare: a kitchen that draws from one man’s 45-year conservation project, translated into a meal.
Conservation you can taste
There is a particular kind of conservation that happens when an endangered plant ends up on a plate, precisely because of that fact. When people encounter something, taste it, understand where it came from and what it took to preserve it, their relationship to its survival changes.
Alan has always understood this. The Botanical Ark is an open garden, a place where tours are led with the specific intention of helping visitors understand what they are in the presence of, why it matters, and what is being lost every day the world’s rainforests shrink. His approach is, as he puts it, conservation through understanding.
At Ever Bloomfield, that philosophy finds a new expression. A guest who eats a dish made with a fruit that does not exist in commercial cultivation, that carries the story of an expedition to Borneo or the Amazon, that would not be on the table without four decades of quiet, determined work, leaves with a different kind of knowledge than they arrived with. A felt understanding rather than a fact. Of what is rare. Of what it takes to keep something alive.
That is the kind of dining experience that lasts.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Botanical Ark?
The Botanical Ark is a private ethno-botanical garden near Mossman in Far North Queensland, established by Alan and Susan Carle over the past 45 years. It holds more than 3,000 species of tropical plants collected from more than 40 countries, with a focus on species used by Indigenous rainforest cultures for food, medicine, shelter, and daily life. It is widely considered one of the most significant private botanical collections in the world.
How is the Botanical Ark connected to Ever Bloomfield?
Alan Carle is working directly with Ever Bloomfield to design and plant out the lodge’s kitchen garden and botanical planting. His expertise and the Botanical Ark’s collection inform which species are selected, how they are grown, and how they connect to the surrounding landscape. The garden is a direct expression of his life’s conservation work.
Will guests at Ever Bloomfield be able to visit the Botanical Ark?
The Botanical Ark is located near Mossman, approximately an hour south of Bloomfield, and offers private guided tours through selected operators. Our team can advise guests who wish to visit as part of a broader Daintree region itinerary.
What kinds of plants will be in the Ever Bloomfield garden?
The garden will include a wide range of botanical and edible tropical species, many sourced from the Botanical Ark’s collection. This includes rare and endangered fruit varieties from across the tropical world, as well as plants with deep cultural and culinary significance to the communities of this region. Many will be varieties that guests are unlikely to have encountered anywhere else.
What does the garden mean for the dining experience at Ever Bloomfield?
Ever Bloomfield’s Head Chef will work directly with what the garden produces, creating a menu shaped by what is growing, what is in season, and what carries the most interesting story. Dishes will be made from ingredients found nowhere else in a restaurant context in Australia, a direct product of Alan’s decades of conservation work, brought to the table.
The garden is already growing
Alan Carle is approaching his mid-seventies. His collecting expeditions to remote jungles have become rarer. The work continues, in advisory roles for governments and institutions, in the Botanical Ark itself, and now in the garden taking shape at Ever Bloomfield on the Daintree Coast.
Forty-five years of expeditions. Three thousand species saved. One garden, and one kitchen, where the story comes to the table.
Ever Bloomfield opens on 1 December 2026. Ever Bloomfield Lodge sits between the ancient Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Explore the lodge at ever.au/bloomfield or discover our experiences.