​​​​​​​​​Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden embraces botanical art and creative art to support and showcase our mission.

We hold at least one annual botanical art exhibition in October and encourage artists to paint or draw from our important collections on our premises. These focused exhibitions are very popular with works also available for sale to visitors. We are seeking funding to ensure outstanding works of our most important plants are purchased for permanent display in the SUBG botanical art collection and to promote botanical art in South Africa.

​​​Artist access to SUBG plants​

If you are an early, mid or late career botanical artist with an interest in making work for possible acquisition for the garden's permanent collection, please download the Artists Information pack. It contains all the information you need to apply for this unique opportunity.

Please click here to download the full James and Shirley Sherwood Foundation Botanical Art Collection Artist's Information Pack.​

To initiate a conversation about a plant you wish to work on please contact studio@karen-stewart.co.za. 

To book a work space please contact razelle@sun.ac.za.​

We will provide access to nearly all of our collections to recognised botanical artists and BAASA members. For critical conservation items this will  be supervised access at our offices. If we have sufficient duplicate material, removal of plants from soil or loans to take home may be possible, but this will not be normal practise. If staff do not offer this option, please assume all work with live plants will need to be at our premises.

​We request that artists record the full SUBG accession and item number/s when illustrating our material. This will be in the form YYYY-SequentialNo/ItemNo (e.g. 2024-345/2). Our world​​​ class collection database and information management system for our living collection is then a permanent reference linked to the illustration or painting. This greatly increases the scientific value of the paintings, just as working from a herbarium voucher specimen or type specimen would.

Scientific names and nomenclature

Plant scientific names conform to a global system with strict rules.

Most important, the Genus name is always Capitalised, and species_name is always lower case. All subtaxon names for subspecies, variety and form names are also lower case. The actual substaxon type is inserted after the species name, and must NOT be capitalised. Similarly Genus, species and subtaxon plant names are always in italics,except the subtaxon type:

Genus_name  species_name  subtaxon_type  subtaxon_name

E.g. Conophytum  herreanthus  subsp.  herreanthus​

While horticultural cultivars are not our focus, it is worth noting that these are indicated as cv. with the name in single apstrophe and not italicised. Cultivar names are also lower case except where a proper noun is included, such as person's name or place name. e.g. Rosa cv. 'red delight' or Rosa ​cv. 'Jenson's button'.

​​​​SUBG's high value conservation collections for illustration

This current list of species are a priority for illustration for us, with an indication of flowering time to help artists to plan their prepare and research work and so that they can come back for a second and even a third visit when they flower again in 2026 and 2027. Please use iNaturalist to see what the plant looks like. We have also indicated when an artist is working on an illustration. We are not allowing artist ‘exclusive’ access to one plant. The ‘not available’ tag indicates that the plant is not likely to flower in the next 6 months due to its age.​