Our work
The Botanical Garden not only serves the needs of the Stellenbosch University by supporting research and education, but also renders an extremely important service to the broader community by supporting regional plant conservation efforts and community projects, and acting as an open-air laboratory and information centre for the public.
Education
Education has always been a part of botanical gardens – often being associated or established with universities in the area. At the Stellenbosch University Botanical Gardens, we strive to make a difference in the lives of those that live, learn and work in the area by providing an experience that not only reconnects people to nature but teaches them about its wonders. Therefore, a few different educational tour options for registered educational facilities have been prepared to facilitate this. Tours can be booked by contacting the garden via phone or email. For pre-booked registered groups, no entry will be charged. Prior booking is essential. Educational tours have been prepared to correspond with the CAPS school curriculum.
Things worth taking note of:
- School learners enter for free when part of a pre-booked group.
- Take note of the weather and warn learners before the time to prepare appropriately.
- It helps provide a more insightful tour if we have ample warning to prepare, be sure to book well in advance to ensure this.
Contact details:
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +27 21 808 3054
This tour involves discussing things from what makes something alive to the water cycle and plant respiration. The tour will be shaped to the specific group, considering the majority grade present. We hope to inspire and bring things learnt in the classroom to life, helping them engage with topics in a relevant way that invokes the valuing of the natural world.
These tours will typically take under 1 hour.
There are many different learning styles and, for some, the best way to learn is to experience and see, smell, and feel things for themselves! This tour is designed to be supplementary to high school biology and help make theory a little more tangible and colourful. We will discuss things like the different classification systems of life to biomes and ecology all the way to hormonal plant defense mechanisms. We boast a beautiful conservation collection, an indigenous medicine and food garden as well as an invasive plant display – all helping the knowledge learnt in the classroom come alive. Tours can have highlighted topic areas if desired, but this is not necessary.
These tours will typically take around 90 minutes (about 1 and a half hours).
We love collaboration and invite any travelling academics to contact us directly to organize a personal tour with our curator or assistant curator.
Plant identification and advice
Do you have a plant, pest or disease that you want to indentify or do you need gardening advice? Try these handy resources. Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden does not provide plant identifications or horticultural advice - we just don't have the staff or resources able to support this. But we do have some great recommendations for online resources.
iNaturalist.org is our preferred platform for identification of wild indigenous plants. We have a very active Cape user community, many of whom are world taxon experts. Citizen science records provide an incredibly valuable conservation and research contribution. The platform provides a peer review identification process so that identifications can be confirmed and supported or contested by experts. We use it as an essential tool for our work and SUBG staff and interns currently have over 12,297 observations across 2,696 species on iNaturalist.org
The Plant Disease Clinic at the Department of Plant Pathology can diagnose samples of plant material. Please contact them directly for more information.
PlantZAfrica is a extensive online plant library with information about our indigenous plants and how to grow them.