The role of botanical gardens across the world is varied, with strategies and implementation ranging from firmly horticultural, to general environmental education, to strong botanical research and conservation. To some extent these strategic focus areas are determined by history and habit, perhaps more flatteringly called heritage. I’ll talk to the range of examples out there, and how unusual our South African and Cape context really is, both socially and of course from a biodiversity perspective. I’ll explore my opinion that perhaps that our SA Botanical Gardens are a little out of sync with modern needs, but also just how much wonderful work is being done by SANBI and others. I’ll also discuss how the realities of resources and size determine what is possible and how that has driven our specific strategic focuses within our little university botanical garden at Stellenbosch. I promise there will be lots of beautiful pictures of rare plants, and I might even admit that our strategic focus is influenced by how pretty the threatened species are.


Dr Donovan Kirkwood finished his PhD in plant ecology at UCT in 2002. He spent 6 months working and travelling in Peru and surrounding countries before starting at CapeNature as a regional ecologist responsible for expert support to protected area management and management plans and regional land-use and conservation. By 2008 he was becoming increasingly involved in GIS based spatial planning to support protected area management and tourism planning, and to prioritise focus areas for protected area expansion through Stewardship and other programmes. From 2014 he worked as a private conservation consultant, before taking what seems to be a detour in late 2018 – but actually wasn’t – to manage the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden as Curator. Donovan has also worked as a farm manager and freelance photographer before graduating, has grown plants all his life, and has a love old motorbikes, all things that turned out to be surprisingly important for running a botanical garden.


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