April 22
Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden is the largest of 11 botanical gardens in South Africa. It is situated on the eastern slope of Table Mountain in Cape Town. It is 1300 Acres in size with 88 Acres being planted. It is without a doubt the most beautiful botanical garden that I have ever seen. It is full of plants that I don’t know and a few that I do. It gives me great hope that some of these plants will be coming to California because we share the same Mediterranean climate.
They specialize in the Proteas, Restios, and the South African Heaths that are native to South Africa. The term the South Africans use to describe this plant association is Fynbos. These are plants that are adapted to fire similar to California’s chaparral. Here are some of the hundreds of varieties.
A very beautiful sculptural feature of the garden is the tree canopy walkway which they call the “Boomslang”. It is a raised walkway through and over the trees of the arboretum with panoramic views.
You may notice from the videos that the bridge is a little wobbly. It sways back and forth a little when you walk on it.
The above 3 photos are of the Silver Tree (Leucodendron argenteum) which is an endangered plant in the Protea family which is endemic to a small area of the Cape Peninsula of South Africa.
April 23
We came back to the garden on our last day in Africa.
We ate breakfast first at our hotel then took a cab to the garden.
Amazing food
Some views of our hotel, The Table Bay
Back to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden:
There are many other interesting areas of the garden:
The conservatory
African bulbs
Cycad garden
Rock garden
Restios
The Restios are a fitting end to a beautiful vacation. They are beautiful plants as Africa is a beautiful continent. There are many different varieties as Africa has many different fascinating countries. There is great hope that these plants will be improved and used more in horticulture as there is great hope that Africa’s political and economic situation will improve in the future.
Next: Trip Review and Summary
I often visit your website and have noticed that you don’t update it often. More frequent updates will give your page higher rank & authority in google.
I know that writing articles takes a lot of time, but you can always help yourself with miftolo’s tools which
will shorten the time of creating an article to a few seconds.