Rhys Gardner is a New Zealand botanist. He completed his BSc (Hons) in botany at the University of Auckland in 1971, followed by a PhD in 1977. He has served as a botanical ecologist and taxonomist for the former DSIR Botany Division at Mt Albert, Auckland, and a consulting botanist for Bioresearchers Ltd. He also served as a volunteer at the Auckland Museum Herbarium for many years, becoming a Research Associate in 1990. He has worked widely in the field, collecting specimens from Rarotonga, Fiji, Norfolk Islands, the Solomon and Chatham Islands, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea. He has described, new to science, three species, one subspecies and one forma. He has contributed botanical specimens to herbaria around the world. Most of his publications since the 1980s are to be found in the Auckland Botanical Society Journal and the New Zealand Botanical Society Newsletter.