Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden (SUBG) - the oldest academic botanical garden in South Africa - celebrates its centenary this year with a weeklong programme of events during Woordfees. Established in 1922, you will find this unique botanical garden of 1,7 ha in the centre of Stellenbosch, in the middle of the Cape Floristic Region's globally significant botanical diversity, and the highly threatened lowland ecosystems of the wine-growing regions.

SUBG is an academic garden - a teaching garden - substantially supported and funded by Stellenbosch University resources and stakeholders, with the enormous potential to support aligned academic work and leverage academic expertise. At its core, SUBG works for conservation, education, and academic support to the University. Since registering as a BGCI Conservation Practitioner Garden in 2018, SUBG has hugely expanded of teaching and restoration collections by 1,500 species. Nearly 300 of these are conservation samples of critically threatened plants, protection against extinction in the wild.

The past few years has seen this garden transformed into a garden of conservation stories. Wander through it and find threatened plants from the surrounding landscape and all over the world. The teaching legacy includes a Welwitchia that was planted in 1924 to new threatened lowland habitat displays, and the living Oxalis collection - the largest and best curated in the world.

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