Greenhouses to visit in South Africa

The Verrière atlas lists 4 greenhouses in South Africa, built between 1882 and 2025.

In South Africa, greenhouses recreate landscapes as much as they shelter plants. In Gqeberha, the 1882 Pearson Conservatory, a Victorian kit shipped from Scotland, has kept its original cast iron through the 2009–2011 rebuild. At Stellenbosch University's botanical garden, a Welwitschia sown in 1926 still grows where it was planted. In Cape Town, the Kirstenbosch conservatory, opened in 1997 to protect succulents from the wet Cape winters, arranges the regions of southern Africa around a baobab, each bed built from that region's own rocks. Durban opened a tropical display house in 2025, taking over from the Ernest Thorp Orchid House, closed after the 2022 floods.