South African horticulturalist. Born in the village of Bunbury in Cheshire and trained at Kew, Joseph Mathews became the first curator of the National Botanical Gardens, Kirstenbosch (1913-1936). He left Kew in 1895 to work at Cape Town Public Gardens and for some years owned a nursery and florist shop in Roeland Street, which won him many prizes in floriculture, especially for his roses and carnations. He then collaborated with Kirstenbosch founder, Professor Henry Pearson, on the design and layout of the gardens, which he continued to develop after Pearson's death in 1916. Although he left no herbarium, he successfully introduced many indigenous plants, including some previously undescribed species, into cultivation, a subject he wrote about in the English and Afrikaans press, in the Journal of the Botanical Society of South Africa and more thoroughly in his book The Cultivation of Non-Succulent South African Plants. He was recognised as an Associate of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1932, and has been commemorated in Geissorhiza mathewsii L. Bolus and Tritonia mathewsiana L. Bolus (= Crocosmia mathewsiana (L. Bolus) Goldblatt ex M.P. de Vos).

Sources:
R.H. Compton, 1949, "Joseph William Matthews: First Curator of Kirstenbosch", Journal of the Botanical Society of South Africa, 35: 9
L.B. Creasy, 1949, "J.W. Mathews AHRHS", Journal of the Kew Guild, 6(55): 781.