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The Citizen
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
Feast your eyes at garden show
KLOOF Conservancy is once again showcasing indigenous flora with its 25th Indigenous Open Gardens Show on Saturday, June 21 and Sunday, June 22 from 09:00 to 16:00. From gorgeous gorge edges to meandering grassland pathways, there is something for everyone as artists and crafters showcase their talents. Various conservation organisations will share insights on birds, butterflies, snakes, monkeys and frogs. Plants and food will be on sale and there will be a treasure hunt for children. Tanya Visser, Highway's celebrity garden guru, will open up her garden (garden 6), allowing visitors a glimpse at interesting and unusual plant collections, or a chance to relax with a picnic. Also read: Traci finds joy in the little things Garden 2 presents a rare opportunity to visit the grounds of the stone mansion at TWIMs and see the extensive gardens that are embracing our local plant heritage. The Flora and Fauna Publications Trust and renowned indigenous plant expert Dr Elsa Pooley will be at Garden 4 to sign copies of her new book South African Indigenous Garden Plants. Tickets are R35 per person for entry at each garden. Entry is free for kids under 12 years. Payment is either cash or Zapper, and proceeds go to local conservation projects. Details are available on the website: Garden No 1 – The home of Helen and Allan Westwood, 5 Everton Road, Kloof. This garden has never been on show before and has undergone renovation in the recent past. As such it offers a blend of established and new plantings and numerous interesting features. This garden is mostly flat and relatively easy to walk about. Parking is available on the verges. Garden No 2 – The Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies (TWIMS), 74 Everton Road, Kloof. This garden has previously been on show with the Rotary Anns but has since been significantly changed with large new gardens and a wetland. It offers a blend of intimate gardening (the original garden) and an extensive corporate garden. This is a large site with lots of 'extras', so allow enough time for the visit. The property can be divided into four distinct garden areas. This garden is flat and has excellent paved paths. Direction arrows will indicate commended route through the property. There is parking on the premises. Garden No 3 – The home of Betsy and Ant Kee, 5 Pearson Road, Everton. This is a well-established garden with a 'park like' feel and numerous interesting trees. This garden is relatively easy to walk about. Funds raised at this garden will be donated to the Mend-the-Molweni Project. Verge parking is available. Garden No 4 – The home of Shireen and Gary Borchardt, 7 Falls View Road, Everton. This stunning first time on show garden is packed with a range of indigenous species on the edge of Krantzkloof Nature Reserve. It is at its best during the winter season so people can expect a colourful display. This garden has a level area which is easy to walk through, but a large part of the garden is on a slope with good paths but challenging for those with walking difficulties. This is at the end of a cul-de-sac on a narrow road and verge parking is available. Garden No 5 – The home of Heather and Laurence Balcomb, 8 Kenelm Road, Everton. Under the previous owner this garden was proudly 'wild' but has been mildly tamed as some structure was introduced to sections of the garden without detracting from its wild nature. There is a small but 'productive' grassland and an extensive forest section to explore. This garden is relatively easy to walk about although there is a forest path which is uneven and on an incline. Garden No 6 – Izolda and Tanya Visser, The Potting Shed, 6 Controversy Drive, Assagay. This garden is now a regular feature of the garden show, and the Kloof Conservancy continues to feature it because of Izolda and Tanya's passion for encouraging gardening and all that it entails. Visser regularly rejuvenates the garden and there is always something new to see. This garden is relatively easy to walk about but it does have some stairs in places. For more from the Highway Mail, follow us on Facebook , X and Instagram. You can also check out our videos on our YouTube channel or follow us on TikTok. Click to subscribe to our newsletter here At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Daily Maverick
28-04-2025
- Daily Maverick
From exotic to indigenous – a groundbreaking guide to South Africa's rich plant diversity
Three of the country's top indigenous plant fundis have been collaborating for more than 10 years to produce the most ambitious guidebook to date on South African indigenous garden plants. In a world where city folk are glued to the hamster wheel of work and domestic chores, nurturing a small garden can provide a very welcome respite. And, it allows us to channel some of our creative juices into reshaping, redecorating or restoring our immediate living environment. Whether it is maintaining a small veggie patch, a few pot plants or a more ambitious affair, recent research suggests that roughly 25-50% of adults in a wide range of countries now engage in some form of regular 'gardening' activity. Somewhat strangely though, many South African gardeners still opt for exotic plants from distant continents, in much the same way as we often know more about the history, literature or technologies of distant nations than we do about our own. For some, indigenous gardens are still seen as either 'dull' or 'messy' when compared with the fragrant rose beds and manicured lawns or hedges reminiscent of the Gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Until quite recently, this 'West is best' approach has prevailed, even though South Africa is endowed with one of the highest rates of plant diversity in the world — with many of these plants found nowhere else in the world. But things are changing, partly due to increasing awareness about the rapid demise of Africa's natural flora and fauna — and a realisation that many local plants are actually just as colourful, majestic or attractive as the foreign species that many of our parents planted out of habit. The Durban-based Flora and Fauna Publications Trust has also played a key role in stimulating awareness and making new knowledge more accessible to local gardeners by publishing and raising funds to subsidise the cost of eight guide books since 1992. The latest guide, South African Indigenous Garden Plants – The Gardener's Guide, is the most ambitious to date and weighs more than an old Telkom phone directory for the Witwatersrand. Unlike some of the previous guides that had a regional emphasis, the latest book has a national focus, showcasing more than 2,400 native plant species — all of which can be grown in local gardens (depending on the climatic conditions of where you live). Though the featured plants comprise just over 10% of the country's roughly 23,000 indigenous species, co-author Elsa Pooley notes that squeezing in descriptions and photographs of so many plants into a single book was a daunting and time-consuming project. Pooley, who has been designing and landscaping public and private gardens for nearly 50 years, has written several plant guide books and also worked closely with horticulturist Geoff Nichols on several projects in KwaZulu-Natal. Somewhere around 1999, Pooley and Nichols came up with the idea of a national guide on indigenous gardening and made a proposal to the Fauna and Flora Trust, but then they got busy or sidetracked with other projects. Finally, about 10 years ago they heard that a similar book was being planned by Andrew Hankey, specialist horticulturist at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden in Johannesburg — so they invited Andrew to join them and pool their knowledge. 'None of us could have done this on our own. We just wouldn't have had the time,' says Pooley. Published jointly by the Flora and Fauna Trust and Struik Nature, the initial print run of 4,000 copies was all but sold out within two weeks of its launch last month, and Pooley is convinced that strong demand will continue, especially during the Chelsea Flower Show that opens on 20 May 2025. Speaking at one of several book launches last month, Hankey said: 'I wish there had been a book like this when I was still a student, because the literature on indigenous plants was very limited at the time. We were not able to include every single plant from South Africa, but the huge variety covered in this single book is groundbreaking.' Gardening personality Keith Kirsten, one of several dozen co-sponsors of the book, also hopes that the guide will inspire more gardeners to embrace local plants. 'If we can just get people to grow a dozen indigenous plants each, that would be great,' says Kirsten. Pooley noted that it was now possible to buy or source almost any indigenous plant from local nurseries, though there were still gardeners who believed they were 'not colourful enough'. Spread across more than 600 pages, the photographs in the book should help to dispel that notion, especially plants such as aloes, clivias, orchids or gazanias. Categorised into just over a dozen sections, the plants have been grouped according to size and common characteristics such as bulbs, climbers, shrubs or trees, along with shorter insets giving practical advice on planning a garden from scratch or shielding plants from the impacts of frost and icy winds. There is also a special section on 'gardening for wildlife', focusing on the best types of plants for attracting birds, butterflies, bees and other small species of wildlife back into the heart of suburbia. DM South African Indigenous Garden Plants is available at Exclusive Books and several other bookstores and can be ordered online via or
