WEDNESDAY 18 April marks the 170th anniversary of the first meeting held in Durban that lead to the development of the Durban Botanic Gardens, Africa’s oldest surviving botanic garden.
Donal McCracken, senior professor in the Centre for Communication, Media and Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said 18 April marked the 170th anniversary of a meeting, held in what is now the Royal Hotel in Durban, at which modern science was founded in the province.
“That day a handful of Durbanites came together and decided to establish an agricultural and horticultural society, not unlike those recently founded in Cape Town, Madras and at Singapore. Most notable at the meeting were Edmund Morewood, the founder of the KZN sugar industry, and the region’s surveyor general, the popular and energetic Dr William Stanger,” he said.
Two months later this group negotiated the grant of 40 hectares of land for a botanic gardens at the end of the Berea on the Umgeni River flats. This area proved dangerous because of crocodiles and hippopotamus, and so in 1851 the gardens were relocated to its present site on the Berea.
“Cape Town Botanic Gardens, which has now become the Old Company Gardens, slightly predated Durban’s. Grahamstown came slightly later. The Durban gardens in these early days were particularly significant because they served the dual purpose of being a fledging agricultural research station for KZN, with experimental plots growing pineapples, cotton and coffee. At the same time the gardens provided a base for plant hunters who brought their finds of indigenous plants for either identification or shipment to Kew Gardens in London, where they were described and scientifically named, some appearing as beautiful illustrated plates in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine,” said McCracken.
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He said the new site of Durban Botanic Gardens had its own challenges. It was more than three kilometres from the village of Durban and separated from it by a swampy vlei.
“Very few people visited the gardens, except in autumn time when school children made their way around the swamp in large numbers to pick mulberry fruit from the trees. Only after the 1870s when Botanic Gardens Road was tarred did many more Durbanites visit the gardens. By then the pathways had been laid out much as today and a magnificent collection of trees, indigenous and foreign, had been planted. By then the Durban Botanic Gardens was one of the world’s great botanical institutions with its own herbarium, now part of the South African National Biodiversity Institute network, publication series, large conservatory and fernery and unique plant collections,” he said.
That scientific legacy started by Dr Stanger 170 years ago continues today with the Durban Botanic Gardens, now the oldest surviving botanic gardens in Africa. As well as being a green place of escape and relaxation for all the people of Durban, it continues to pursue the two fundamental goals of any botanic gardens – to advance the scientific study of plant life through research and publications, popular and scientific, and to educate all the citizens of Durban about the plant world.
“It can also lay claim to being Durban’s oldest public institution, even older than the municipality, the library or the museum, and beats even the beach as the city’s oldest tourist destination!” said McCracken.
Durban Botanic Gardens celebrates 170 years of existence next year.
Donal McCracken’s book on the history of Durban Botanic Gardens is on sale at the Gardens’ Visitor Centre.
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