​​​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​

We will provide access to nearly all of our collections to recognised botanical artists and BAASA members. For critical conservation items this will likely be supervised access at our offices. Where we do have spare or excess material, removal of plants from soil or loans to take home may be possible, but this will not be normal practise.

​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, and all subtaxon names for subspecies, variety and form names are also lower case. The actual substaxon type will NOT be capitalised. 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.​