New Botanic Gardens director appointed

A passionate horticulturalist who helped set up the National Botanic Gardens of Wales has been appointed to lead the team at Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens.

Wolfgang Bopp will take up the new position of Director of Botanic Gardens and Garden Parks in the spring.

Wolfgang Bopp is the new director of the Botanic Gardens.

“We are delighted to have someone of Wolfgang’s calibre to lead our team at the Botanic Gardens and to oversee our garden parks,’’ says Christchurch City Council Head of Parks Andrew Rutledge.

“The Botanic Gardens are one of Christchurch’s most treasured public spaces and attract millions of visitors a year. We want to build on that legacy and Wolfgang is the ideal person to help us do that,’’ Mr Rutledge says.

Born in Germany, Mr Bopp studied at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom before doing a six month stint with the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge.

He then worked as assistant curator at the Ness Botanic Gardens, near Liverpool, before taking on the role as the first Curator at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.

In 2004 the Guardian newspaper included Mr Bopp in a list of “80 prodigiously talented young people - scientists, DJs, novelists, architects, politicians” who they predicted were set to “shape our lives in the early 21st century”.

After leaving Wales, Mr Bopp became the Curator, and subsequently director, of the internationally renowned Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Hampshire. The gardens feature one of the most diverse hardy plant collections in the world.