Out of Africa

It has been a long time that I have posted anything. This is partly because I have not had anything to say, and partly because for a month I had the good fortune to visit South Africa. I suppose most people associate Africa with herds of zebra and wildebeests, not to mention the odd lion and elephant, or perhaps even Meryl Streep falling in love with Robert Redford under an African sky.  I did not see Meryl Streep but I did see wild animals - not all the big five, but to be 5 metres away from three rhino with no sign at least from the rhinos that they were in any way worried was exciting enough. But for a gardener, Africa, but especially South Africa, and within South Africa, an area in and around the Cape, is the home of the greatest diversity of plant life to be found anywhere in the world. It also has a great gardening tradition, helped no doubt by the fact that labour has been very cheap, and in Kirstenbosch it posses one of the world's most famous botanical gardens.

If I say that I was nevertheless a little bit disappointed with the gardening aspects of my visit I would need to emphasize the 'little'. I did see some lovely things. The five 300 year old Camphor trees at Vergelegen estate near Stellenbosch are quite remarkbale, as are more generally the many outstanding trees to be found in the Cape area, amongst  which Pin Oaks (quercus palustre/chêne des marais) and various eucalyptus species feature greatly. Of course none of these are natives of South Africa, and in fact I am not sure that I could name an indigenous South African tree in anyway equalling their stature.Possibly the stink and yellow woods (celtis africana; podocarpus falcatus), though most of the yellowwoods I saw were small, this no doubt because the species has been too much used for floors and furniture.  It is not altogether surprising that we in Europe are better off for trees. Much of South Africa is semi-arid country if not actually desert, and the lack of regular rainfall is not conducive to the growing of large trees, and where you do find them is in the wetter coastal regions.

What much of the landscape I saw - essentially an area called the Karoo, a large area of central South Africa - reminded me very much of our garrigue; that is to say it is very scrubby, evergreen, often aromatic, quite a few succulents, and indeed anything that can cope with harsh conditions  including snow.  In fact the more famous fynbos , a comparitively small area surrounding the Cape is not dissimilar, except that in certain seasons it bursts into floral life in a most remarkable way. One of the reasons no doubt for my slight disappointment, is that I was both a little too late, and not really in the right place to witness this flowering. This would apply to my visit to Kirstenbosch, essentially an indigenous/fynbos garden, where the main flowering period was over, and anyway I am not sure that I am into proteas, in my view rather bling-bling cacti.

I am being a little harsh. One reason for being so it that as in England and France there is a growing back to nature/lets be indigenous movement, which as readers of this blog will know already, just fills me with rage.  If you want to go back to nature, whatever that might entail, by all means do it, but don't call it gardening. It is true that given South Africa's great a variety of plants, an indigenous garden there would be a good deal more interesting than one in SW France, but it would entail the removal of all those camphor and eucalyptus trees that I found so impressive in the Cape, not to mention most of the trees that line the streets of Johannesburg, including the lovely jacaranda trees, making that city one of the largest man-made forests in the world. Moreover the prettiest garden that I visited, admittedly situated some 1500 metres high, was essentially English in feel, a wonderful mixture of blues, yellows and whites.  Much of the blue was indeed provided by the very South African agapanthus, but the yellow was verbascum olympicum, apparently from Turkey, and the white, the rose Iceberg, originally bred in Germany. Mention of this rose reminds me to note that it is very much alive and well in South Africa, to be found in practically every garden  One often remarks that it has no smell, which is true, but especially en masse it looks very good, and clearly does not mind the heat..

I suspect that given time I could easily fall in love with the fynbos, and indeed the Karoo, and as regards the latter I would strongly recommend two books by Eve Palmer, The Plains of Camdeboo, and Return to Cambedoo; both are a paean for the contryside that she was born into, and where some of her relatives still live, though not without a very strong factual base. But the problem I suppose is that I find it difficult to see how I could integrate the South African flora into my Gersois garden. Of course a lot of South African plants have already arrived here in force: the agapanthus is an obvious example. I have made a list of less well-known plants which I thought I might try, though having returned to find the Gers in the grip of its coldest winter for twenty five years - obviously entirely due to global warming! - I am a little bit discouraged. For the moment I will leave you with the name of one plant, seeds of which it so happens are now available at Chiltern Seeds. It is not the most distinguished of plants, but at Kirstenbosch it provided a spectacular burst of blue, amongst the rather drab fynbos. It is in fact a lobelia (l.valida), I suppose in our neck of the woods a half-hardy perennial of about 50 cms.  Just a little bit different and definitely worth a try.