Robert Stodel Honoured with Gold

Self-made businessman Robert Stodel has been honoured with a Gold Award from The Green Industry in recognition of his contribution to gardening in South Africa and for raising awareness of environmental issues.

Stodel, the managing director of the hugely successful Stodels Nursery group in the Western Cape, was instrumental in establishing Arbor Day as an event on the South African gardening calendar, and over the years he has planted trees with a number of dignitaries, including the Queen of England, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Hilary Clinton. On Arbor Day each year, Stodels Nurseries gives away free trees to its customers in exchange for bags of newspapers, which are sent for recycling.

Stodel has made an invaluable contribution to the greening of the Cape by donating flower bulbs to the city council, creating peace gardens and donating 380 000 trees to the youth of Cape Town. He has also assisted in the fundraising efforts of schools and churches, by making flower bulbs available to them at cost price, hereby ensuring that gardening became accessible to an even wider group.
His success and commitment to greening the Cape is even more extraordinary in light of the fact that he arrived in South Africa from Holland at the age of 16, and started out selling bulbs door-to-door. It was a humble beginning, but one he looks back on fondly as many elderly people invited him in for coffee and biscuits.

More than 40 years later, he has built an incredibly successful business which employs 120 people and has become many a Western Cape gardener