Cape Town itself is a garden city. The City Council has always been proud of its garden work in the city bowl and suburbs and has worked closely with Kirstenbosch to maintain this garden city feel. However, there are many areas, away from the lush suburbs and city centre, in the townships in particular, where there is much to be done. It is some of these projects, as well as ongoing programmes in Kirstenbosch itself, that we will be working on.
Our group is divided into smaller more managable groups of three or four people and we rotate around the different projects so everyone gets a chance to do most things. This works well because it means every day is different and small groups are easier to manage. Here are some examples from previous years.
OUTREACH PROJECTS
1. Greening the community
Many of the townships are built on the Cape Flats, a bleak area with unproductive soil and incessant coastal winds. The townships burgeoned as migrants flocked to Cape Town to seek a better life. These places were thrown up with no urban planning or designated park areas for recreation.
To counter the harsh environment of the townships SANBI works with schools and communities to create green spaces and more pleasant school grounds. Each year a number of projects are chosen and they are followed through for up to five years, helping communities learn and to pass on the basics of horticulture to others until that individual project is fully mature.
We worked at several schools -- the one above, Vuyani School is in the township of Guguletu where, alongside the teachers and pupils, we helped plant another section of the grounds.
The pupils are encouraged to come up with their own design ideas (above left, Siyazingisa school and right, Gardenia School, Belhar) using materials they’ve found lying around. With limited resources a lot of ingenuity goes into the design.
2. Abelimi Bezekhaya
It means “Farmers of home” in Xhosa. This project helps farmers in the townships turn waste land into market gardens. The day after our visit the council would be inpecting the farms to decide whether the land should remain as farm land. The farmers were keen that the vegetable and herb plots looked as spic and span as possible. But however busy, no day goes by without a leisurely lunch. Shaded from the midday sun farmers and visitors alike pooled their food and anecdotes.
Each Tuesday at dawn the week’s crop is harvested and taken to the distribution centre run by Harvest of Hope. In the packing shed the vegetables, grown without pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilizers, are washed, graded and packed into boxes by women from the local abused women’s refuge and transported to Cape Town for distribution.
Customers make a commitment to buy a box each week. They are mostly parents at Cape Town’s exclusive private schools, together with the staff and students at the University of Cape Town. Though small at present, the project is growing fast and those involved hope one day to supply the supermarkets. The delivery vans are provided by South Africa’s largest supermarket chain, Pick ‘n Pay.
Abelimi Bezekhaya has transformed the lives of many families who not only earn a decent living from growing the vegetables but have healthier, fresher food for their own families.
One problem on the Cape Flats, however, is the incessant wind that affects both the propagation and growth of the vegetables. In a previous year we planted windbreaks - a job that needs to be done at just the time the farmer is at his busiest so that, vital as the task is, it tends to get put aside. It was hard work requiring teamsmanship and a bit of muscle power - attracting an audience of some rather surprised residents!
But usually locals join in rather than just stare.
It was very satisfying to know that in a few months time the windbreak we’d planted would be doing its job.
PROJECTS WITHIN KIRSTENBOSCH
At Kirstenbosch itself we will be engaged on a number of projects linked to SANBI’s core work. Most people in our groups have an interest in learning about the Cape’s indigenous flora as many of the cultivated plants we see in our gardens today are indigenous to South Africa - Agapanthus, Strelitzia, Kniphofia to name just a few.
As the climate in N Europe warms up, more Cape species will find their way into our gardens as they require little water and relish the higher temperatures. One of the best ways of learning about the flora is to work with the plants themselves, and that’s exactly what Kirstenbosch staff encouraged us to do.
On our first day at Kirstenbosch botanist Wendy Hitchcock provides a botanical introduction to the flora through games. It’s a fun day and a way for members of the group to get to know each other.
1. Planting
Kirstenbosch had ambitious plans for us. For the past two years we have been entrusted to replant some of the arterial borders of the gardens. Below is a “before” and “after” from 2008.
This included the Erica and Pelargonium sections and one of the arterial mixed general borders. It was a daunting task planning out 1500 plants when knowledge was limited but an exciting challenge for those in the group who earn a living creating planting plans. In 2009 we help the horticulturist given the task to sort out the forest area. We also planned and planted out another of the main arterial borders. Below, planning and planting a show border.
2. Millennium seed bank project/Conservation of Rare Endangered Wildflowers
Kirstenbosch is a partner in Kew’s Millennium Seedbank project. It is responsible for a number of unique floras in the Western Cape. Collecting, sorting and preserving seed for posterity is a key activity. We worked with the specialists both in the field and back at base. One field trip was to Worcester, the gateway to the Karoo, with a hairy 4x4 drive up a mountain. Armed with pictures of endangered species in flower at the time, different members of the group joined the CREW team (Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers) on field trips to locate species on their list.
We certainly found some interesting specimens but, alas, no endangered ones. However, members of CREW had better luck. On bad weather days the group was inside sorting seed and packing it into envelops for storing, or smoking the Protea and Erica seed to ensure germination in the future - just one of the many intriguing things we discovered about Cape flora.
3. Propagation
An important part of Kirstenbosch’s work is in the nursery. Plants from their collections are cloned or grown from seed for replenishing the public gardens, giving to their outreach projects or selling to the public to encourage the growing of indigenous rather than exotic plants.
The group spent enjoyable, relaxing days pricking out plantlets, sowing and potting on under the supervision of the Kirstenbosch nursery staff.
4. Cycad fertilising
The jewel in the crown at Kirstenbosch is the Cycad collection - a forest of strange fern-like plants that have survived unchanged for millions of years. Some specimens in the collection are rare, one is unique (and male at that!). Below left is a picture of the last remaining Encephalartos woodii known to man being checked out by the keeper Phakamani Xaba who, together with his colleague Dicky Petersen, probably knows more about Cycad-care than anyone in the world. Cycads generally develop large coloured cones and in the wild these are fertilised naturally. However, in the hothouse world of Kirstenbosch they have to be fertilised manually.
One of our tasks was to inject pollen mixed in water into the cone spirals with a large syringe. Only when we return this year will we know whether our work has borne fruit. Phakamani is also responsible for the day-to-day management of the special plants being developed for the 100th anniversary of Kirstenbosch. He couldn’t resist giving us a preview of them and maybe by August this year he will have perfected them.
5. Smoking Erica seeds
Part of the propagation procedure for Erica in the Cape is to smoke the seed to emulate the natural mountain conditions where forest fires are common. Here we help the head of nursery Trevor Adams prepare the smoking tent and then planting out the seeds that have been smoked.
Trevor claimed nearly 100% of our seedlings made it to the gardens or sold at their garden centre. This is in contrast to their normal propagation level of 80%. But maybe he was being generous.