Elsa Pooley has channelled her passion for plants into fields as diverse as botanical research, landscape and garden design, rehabilitation, botanical art, and publishing. The author of best-selling field guides on wildflowers and trees of KwaZulu-Natal and the eastern region, including the Drakensberg and Lesotho, she has received many honours. She conducts specialist botanical tours in southern Africa and runs a small indigenous landscaping and rehabilitation consultancy in KwaZulu-Natal.
Geoff Nichols is an award-winning horticulturist and natural historian, and the author of several books. He has been photographing plants for over 40 years and has been one of the principal contributors to the Flora Publications Trust field guides. He started the first medicinal plant nursery in South Africa and was part of the team that set up the iconic Durban Metropolitan Open Space system. He led the way with ecological management of housing estates from the late 1970s.
Andrew Hankey is a botanical horticulturist with 30 years’ experience working at Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden in Roodepoort, Johannesburg. He has developed and designed impressive living collections of southern African plants, many of these during his tenure at the Walter Sisulu botanical garden. These include the Succulent Rockery, People Plants Garden, Cycad Garden, Forest Garden, Waterwise Display Garden, and the Geological Display Garden, a world first. He has published many articles, both popular and scientific, on South African plants, has served as a garden judge for the South African Landscaping Institute, and is much in demand as a lecturer.
