Date: 28 November 2010Location: Kirstenbosch
Walker: Helen
For other walks in the garden have a look at the Kirstenbosch archive here.
After lunch at the tea room (delicious middle eastern platter - highly recommended) Dorothy and I took a stroll out into the garden. First stop: the newly re-opened fragrance garden.
This area is a collection of particularly fragrant plants, including many pungent pelargoniums, and is especially designed for the olfactory experience - visitors are encouraged to sniff. It's fun. Of course, I tend to treat the whole of Kirstenbosch as a fragrance garden, often bending down to smell flowers and rubbing leaves between my fingers to release their scent, especially in the fynbos sections higher up.
We continued on and strolled around the middle parts of the garden. We have had a lots of rain and it has been warm so the garden was looking particularly lush and green.
Last time I visited I was enamoured with all the spring colours. This time I was enjoying all the different shades of green and the variety of textures and patterns in the vegetation.
Looking up to the mountains above we could see the green extending right up to the peaks. Another walk up these slopes is long overdue.
Of course there were quite a lot flowers in the garden too.
These strelitzias were over and we guessed the wire cages around the flowers were a way to collect the seeds. I'm not sure what strelitzia seeds look like but I guess they must be quite large not to fall through the holes.
There is always something to see at Kirstenbosch. Must visit again soon.
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2 comments:
Kirstenbosch will always be worth a visit. Truly a place Cape Town can be (and is) proud of.
Wonderful narration of your expeditions at Kirstenbosch. The Strelitzia are covered with wire, not so much to catch seed, but rather they protect the seed from thieving squirrels. Strelitzia are hand pollinated to bear fruit, so after all the hard work put into it, it's not a good idea to let the squirrels feast on the labour of so many.
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