The Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden (SUBG) - the oldest academic botanical garden in South Africa – will be celebrating its centenary during the SU Toyota Woordfees from 7-15 October with a special event called the Stellenbosch Flora Festival (SFF).
The festival will not only showcase the garden’s incredible impact on conservation, education and academic support, but will launch recent infrastructure upgrades and give visitors the opportunity to relax, unwind, create art, have fun, learn and explore. This is the inaugural festival of an annual event that will also generate funds to grow a newly established SUBG Flora Fund, directly supporting the garden’s conservation work.
Says SUBG curator Dr Donovan Kirkwood: “We are excited to showcase what we have achieved over the past century during this unique festival. We invite the Stellenbosch community to come and enjoy the activities we’ve planned and see what the garden has to offer during this special week.”
Established in 1922, you will find this unique botanical garden of 1,7 ha in the centre of Stellenbosch, located in the Cape Floristic Region's botanical diversity, specifically within the highly threatened lowland ecosystems of the wine-growing regions.
SUBG’s impact on plant and habitat conservation is visible in multiple initiatives. As an academic garden - a teaching garden - substantially supported and funded by Stellenbosch University resources and stakeholders, the garden also supports aligned academic work, with academic expertise in turn adding tremendous value research and conservation collections, and educational content. “SUBG not only holds key living collections supporting long-term research programmes at SU; it is also the perfect place to showcase the fascinating and relatable research work being done. Our world class Oxalis living collection and many other projects are only possible because of the collaboration between SUBG and Stellenbosch University academic colleagues,” says Kirkwood.
SUBG now has nearly three hundred conservation-grade collections of species that are at real risk of outright extinction in the wild. Most are from the immediate surrounding winelands. Unlike most botanical garden collections in South Africa or worldwide, SUBG ex-situ conservation collections meet global best practise criteria in terms of population sampling and collection management.
You only need to join SUBG’s educational garden tours, to understand why this garden ticks all the boxes as one of South Africa’s foremost botanical gardens addressing threats to plant and habitat survival through education, research and conservation. Kirkwood’s passion for, and dedication to, building this special garden, is clear to all the interns, staff, lecturers, and students working with him daily – a passion that plays out in every part of this uniquely laid-out garden.
“In the space of only five years, I’m actually amazed that I’ve managed to grow our team and make really meaningful progress towards global ex-situ conservation targets, while also getting multiple major infrastructure upgrades completed or underway. It is so much more progress than I hoped possible, and I am so grateful to our amazing staff and colleagues in SUNCOM and the life sciences departments who have enthusiastically supported the garden,” said Kirkwood.
Bonsai collection gets special space
Kirkwood says they are also so excited to be able to share final renders of how the new Bonsai Display space will be integrated onto the north end of the new Botanical Garden shop. The new building creates a lovely plaza with the old offices, and moves the bonsai to a much more accessible, well-lit and purpose built space. Importantly the roof height allows trees to be displayed at the correct viewing height, rather than sitting too low as they were on the old research benches. Visitors to the garden will see the progress in the next few weeks.
Visitors can join the festivities in the garden, daily from 08:00 – 17:00.
All day events:
Scheduled events and walkabout tours:
09:00-10:00: Breath in the garden, yoga or pilates session
10:00 to 11:00: Daily curator's tour, covering conservation, the garden strategy and history and much more. Join Dr Donovan Kirkwood, SUBG’s curator, for an hour long walk in the garden sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience and vision for this unique place.
12:00 - 13:00: Daily talk on specialist subject from Medicinal Plants, our unique Cape flora to Growing Indigenous. Special guests include Prof. Nox Makunga, Prof Leanne Dreyer, Prof Guy Midgley, Dr Itumeleng Moroenyane, and Dr Paul Hills.
Daily workshops of 2-3 hours are can be pre-booked for an separate fee (R500-R850). Workshops include teaching printing with botanicals, cyanotype making, master classes in terraria, propagation and bonsai. Booking for all workshops include a day pass.
Daily workshops of 2-3 hours are can be pre-booked for an separate fee (R500-R850). Workshops include teaching printing with botanicals, cyanotype making, master classes in terraria, propagation and bonsai. Booking for all workshops include a day pass.
For details and updates please visit www.sun.ac.za/botanicalgarden and click on the Events tab.
Innovus, Stellenbosch University
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15 De Beer Street
Stellenbosch
7600
South Africa
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PO Box 3135
Matieland
7602
South Africa
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t +27 (0) 21 808 3826
e info@innovus.co.za
e forms@sun.ac.za |
