Who would ever be interested in travelling to another country to view a row of shrubs in a botanical garden?  After all, plants just stand there…. perhaps put out a flower or two, drop their leaves, wilt, go brown, develop a certain amount of twigginess – that kind of thing.  Hardly worth the effort of going to see, you would think.

Well, you would be surprised. Botanical gardens are far more than oversized lawns, they are actually microcosms of an entire country.  And South Africa is a country overwhelmingly blessed in terms of bio-diversity.  Just for purposes of comparison, the whole of Europe has about 2 000 plant species.  There are 7 000 in Kirstenbosch alone, and about 18 000 in the whole country.  Some plants occur in patches of land a few metres square, some plants have only a handful of known specimens, some occur on single cliff ledges in one single gorge.  As recently as three years ago an entirely new species of plant, a Strap Lily, was found in the suburb of Kloof in Durban.

To pay homage to this special place in the hearts of botanists everywhere, South Africa has no fewer than nine botanical gardens.  What makes a botanical garden different to a nature reserve is that while the reserve is a patch of untouched (or merely mini-managed) wilderness, a botanical garden is part of a huge botanical industry that includes research, seed banks, interpretation, tourism infrastructure, landscaping as well as natural areas.  A reserve is usually proclaimed to protect some small patch of habitat that deserves protection – a botanical garden is habitat on speed.

The South African National Biodiversity Institute manages all nine of our BGs.  There might be one for each province but our floral treasure-trove is not quite so easily divided and therefore, while the Free State, Northern Cape, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal are represented with one each, Gauteng has two and the Western Cape, naturally, has three.  While they focus on studying and conserving and showcasing our indigenous plants, they also provide an unbeatable tourism destination.

The Queen of Gardens, of course, is Kirstenbosch, with more than half a million visitors per year. It’s a bit unfair, actually – with a backdrop of Table Mountain there is very little chance that Kirstenbosch could be anything else but one of the seven most beautiful gardens in the world.  From the earliest days of settlement of the Cape, this piece of ground was sought after.  In 1895 Cecil John Rhodes bought it and presented it to the nation of South Africa as the ideal site for a botanical garden.  The first director of the garden was a Professor Pearson – and he did something that no one had ever done before.  Instead of planting a garden of pretty flowers taken from various locations all over the world, Prof Pearson decided that Kirstenbosch must be used for the glorification and preservation of only indigenous flora.  This was a unique idea for the time.  Prof Pearson is buried in Kirstenbosch and his grave carries the poignant epitaph:  “All ye who seek his monument, look around.”
But although Kirstenbosch is the flagship, there are more treasures found elsewhere. 
The Free State National Botanical Garden lies just outside Bloemfontein in a valley between two picturesque dolerite koppies, tranquilly featuring huge wild olive trees that thrive in the hot summers and turn glorious in autumn.  The Hantam Garden, just outside Nieuwoudtville, is the epicentre for the annual wildflower display that colours the whole of Namaqualand in jewel-like tones every spring.  Hantam was the first National Botanical Garden in the Northern Cape, and is dedicated to the very special biodiversity of this small area.  Pretoria’s garden has a rather unusual feature:  a quartzite koppie that divides the garden into two completely different biomes, one cold and frosty, the other warm and subtropical.  The Walter Sisulu Garden has always been popular for picnics in the heart of Johannesburg’s urban sprawl, and contains natural vegetation known as ‘Rocky Highland Grassland’.  People who think that the Highveld is an endless expanse of grass will get a bit of a surprise, as this garden features more than 600 plant species. Pietermaritzburg’s Garden has a distinct Victorian flair, which reflects the fact that it was established long before Kirstenbosch and therefore holds to the old-fashioned idea that gardens were showcases for nice plants, not necessarily indigenous plants.  So this garden has swamp cypresses, tulip trees, camphor trees, plane trees, magnolias and all.  The centrepiece is the avenue of London Plane trees, which is a little over 100 years old.  Despite the foreign influence, the gardens also display, promote and conserve indigenous plants. There’s a Useful Plants Garden, featuring plants used culturally by Zulu people for medicine, crafts, food and magic. Harold Porter is a celebration of the coastal fynbos of the Western Cape, with an absolutely bewildering array of habitats, from heathlands, river gorges, relict forests, marshes and dunes, waterfalls and pools.  It is the best place to see the King Protea.  The Karoo Desert Garden – 120km to the north – is unique and features desert and semi-desert plants, with strange and wonderful quiver trees and succulents. The Lowveld Garden contains two rivers, the Crocodile and the Nels, which makes it wet and wild.  The Lowveld flora are quite spectacular and very different to everything else, with an African rain forest, a suspended bridge over a waterfall, cycads, fig trees and baobabs. A day outing to a botanical garden is an extremely inexpensive way to immerse oneself in the look and feel of a piece of country, and there are few things that convey the diversity of South Africa more than the sight of a bunch of indigenous shrubs!  Find your closest botanical garden at www.sanbi.org