Nursery is botanical garden’s lifeline
GEORGE - Ken K Gie, Gi a volunteer l t of f the Garden Route Botanical Garden, is writing a series of articles in celebration of the garden's 25th anniversary in November.
The garden features a propagation nursery that is the lifeline of the garden, and an herbarium that helps preserve DNA of rare plants.
The herbarium
An herbarium is a systematically arranged collection of dried plant specimens catalogued for study by professional and amateur botanists.
It plays an essential part in sourcing DNA from rare and extinct species and allows skilled horticulturists to conserve and restore plants that are threatened by extinction.
Volunteers scour the mountains and valleys looking for rare and endangered plants. Di Turner spearheaded a group called Outramps and they worked with another group called Crew that launched searches for rare plants. The plants would be propagated and dried specimens added to the herbarium's collection for preservation.
Yvette van Wyk, a Botanical Society (BotSoc) member, played a leading role in securing space in the George Museum to establish the herbarium.
This is where the Southern Cape Herbarium originated, but in 1995 it relocated to the Audrey Moriarty Environmental Centre next to the botanical garden.
More than 10 000 dried plants from our region are catalogued and stored in the herbarium which is run entirely by volunteers. It is indeed a huge asset for the garden and scientific study.
The propagation nursery
The major income generator for the botanical garden is the indigenous plant nursery next to the Moriarty Centre. To buy in plants from local nurseries would strain the garden's cash flow and make the prices of the garden's nursery uncompetitive. It was necessary to propagate plants in the garden for resale via the nursery.
Once again, the BotSoc stepped in and sponsored the erection of a propagation nursery.
This required fencing off the space, laying on water and covering sections of it with shade netting. Later, heated beds and mist sprays were installed. In the nursery, cuttings are taken from the "mother stock", placed in a potting medium and nurtured until roots develop. Seeds are harvested from fynbos plants and also placed in a potting medium. Plants are collected from sites where there are going to be developments, this action being a direct effort to save our fast-dwindling fynbos vegetation.
On Wednesday 24 July 2013, the propagation nursery was inaugurated. Zaitoon Rabaney, executive director of the BotSoc, cut the ribbon with trust chairperson Robin Clarke and other members of BotSoc in attendance.