National Botanic Gardens of Malawi
There are three National Botanic Gardens in Malawi: Zomba Botanic Garden in the south, Lilongwe Botanic Garden in central Malawi, and Mzuzu Botanic Garden in the northern region. Sir Alexander Whyte, who worked as a government botanist under the British administration, established Zomba Botanic Garden between 1891 and 1895. The garden served as an experimental garden for ornamentals and economic plants collected from the British Empire. Lilongwe and Mzuzu Botanic Gardens were established a century later, in 1989, as independent institutions, two years after the establishment of the National Herbarium and Botanic Gardens of Malawi. The Lilongwe and Mzuzu Gardens were established with the purpose of conserving regional flora.
The gardens serve as the following:
Systematic
collections of the representatives of the major plant families, and the vegetation
types of Malawi including indigenous and exotic plant species of both economic
and medicinal value.
Conservation
areas for threatened, endangered, endemic, and indigenous species of Malawi.
Environmental
and educational facilities.
Testing
grounds for introduced botanical materials in collaboration with other appropriate
institutions.
Areas
for the promotion of greater knowledge and expertise in horticulture.
Areas
of public amenity and promenade.
Areas
for carrying out research on the flora and vegetation of Malawi.
Living
collections
The
living collections of the three gardens are at different stages of development.
The living collection in Zomba Botanic Garden is diverse, owing to its existence
of over 100 years. Mzuzu and Lilongwe Gardens have concentrated on ex
situ conservation of flora specific to the surrounding areas. Because
the living collections in the three gardens are so dissimilar, I describe
them separately in this article.
Maintenance
of the Collections
The plant collections in Zomba, Lilongwe, and
Mzuzu Botanic Gardens are a valuable resource. Time and money are put into
training staff members to maintain these collections. The programme of work
and maintenance cultural practices are documented, so that these are accessible
to others who may want to use them. Our gardens are for posterity.
—by Lloyd Nkoloma
SABONET
News 6.1: 22
