National Botanic Garden of Zimbabwe is situated about 4 km north of

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

City Centre in the suburb of Alexandra Park. It also houses the National Herbarium of

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. The gardens have an area of almost 7 square kilometres. It was initially established as a recreation area in 1902. In 1962 it became the National Botanic Gardens under the direction of

Hiram Wild Hiram Wild (15 March 1917 - 28 April 1982) was an English botanist who worked in Southern Rhodesia. Wild studied at Imperial College, University of London. In 1945, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis in which he examined the lettuce pathogen, '' Bremia ...

, who at the time was the head of the SRGH (Southern Rhodesian Government Herbarium). Half of the gardens are devoted to indigenous plants from Zimbabwe's woodlands and include most of the 750 species found in the country. Other areas contain plants typical to the African continent including rare and endangered species, as well as exotics from

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

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and the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

. It contains 90% of the different ecological habitats in found in Zimbabwe. Wild appointed Tom Muller from

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

as the first curator in 1961 or 1962. At this time the herbarium was an old building that eventually moved to new, custom built premises in the National Gardens (''circa'' 1967). By then Bob Drummond was in charge as Wild had moved to the university as professor of plant taxonomy.

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20100519163144/http://www.nationalherbarium.org.zw/
Video of National Botanic Gardens of Zimbabwe
Botanical gardens in Zimbabwe Buildings and structures in Harare Tourist attractions in Harare Herbaria in Africa {{garden-stub