Gardeners’ Circle 15 May 2019

Special meeting: Wednesday 15 May 2019 Ebraime from HPNBG will be sowing and smoke treating seeds on Wednesday 15 May from 10:30 onwards. All are welcome to come along and see how it is done. Ebraime will be doing the smoke treatment in the nursery by the potting shed.  Regular monthly visit: Monday 20 May 2019 Our next two garden visits are in the Jocks Bay area - sunny, close to stormy seas, and windy at times! These special gardens are in Lipkin Road. The owners both have interesting stories to tell us - one being that the…
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Designing with Fynbos

(Adapted from https://www.capecontours.co.za/2015/11/13/designing-with-fynbos/ with credit to Contours Landscapes) Now that autumn is underway, it’s time to picture and plan a fynbos garden. The cooler temperatures and reduced soil temperatures provide the ideal conditions for establishing your fynbos garden. A Fynbos garden, using plants indigenous to the winter rainfall areas of the country, is probably one of the most beautiful and rewarding gardens to grow, yet most difficult to maintain over time. Beautiful because of the large diversity of different perennials, annuals, grasses, reeds and succulents that you can use, that allow a rich array of…
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Gardeners’ Circle 19 November 2018

Visit to the Harold Porter Gardens Nursery  Another wonderful gathering with hosts Karin Wall and Ebraime Hull and 39 gardeners! A firm relationship between the HP Gardens and our group has now been established.  Karin and Ebraime shared the complexities and the pleasures that go into maintaining the Gardens.  Ebriame would like us to assist in communicating the good work of the Garden nursery and the Gardens in general. We in turn would like to understand the complexities of what occurs behind the scenes before the Garden’s plants are in the ground and before the…
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New Life in Fynbos

A photo-essay on fynbos regeneration Fynbos is rich in beauty and diversity – but must be renewed by fire to keep it that way. Fynbos goes through stages of growth between fires, ranging from 4-year intervals (grassy fynbos) to 45-year intervals (arid fynbos), depending on the type of fynbos. In our area, 10 to 15-year intervals are optimal. This hillside in Kogelberg Sandstone Fynbos is about one year old. Time to begin again in Kogelberg Sandstone Fynbos. Fire lilies – Cyrtanthus ventricosus. In the immediate post fire phase geophytes, such as Amaryllidaceae, are quick to…
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Gardeners’ Circle 22 October 2018

The fourth gathering of the Gardeners’ Circle* took place in Rooi Els on the wind-free, sunnily warm morning of Monday 22 October. Numbers attending the Gardeners’ Circle have grown on each successive occasion, and this time totalled 49 people, who strolled happily from venue to venue under the direction of Dave de Klerk who had organised the proceedings. The aim once again was to visit three local gardens - each with its own specific climate and soil conditions, and to explore the effect these have on the plants one can hope to grow successfully. No…
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The aliens drank our water!

Understanding the impact of invasive alien vegetation on our water resources   [With thanks to info from the Department of Environmental Affairs]  The Working for Water (WfW) programme was launched in 1995 in response to the realisation of the gravity of the threat that invasive alien plants pose to water resources. A group of scientists and natural resource managers presented the idea to the late Kader Asmal, who was at the time Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. Professor Asmal was instrumental in getting the government support needed for this programme and it was officially launched in September 1995 at a cost of R25 million. At the time Rand Water also formed an integral part of…
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Ethel May Dixie

(1876—1973) Ethel Dixie was born at Sea Point, Cape Town. She was a freelance, largely self-taught botanical artist who was part of a circle of late Victorian and Edwardian women artists in Cape Town, including Emily and Florence Thwaits, all of  whom were interested in botanical art. Miss Dixie came to prominence as the principal illustrator of Rudolf Marloth’s The Flora of South Africa, four volumes in six parts, 1913-1932. This work occupied her for several years and in this sense she is among the first professional botanical artists in South Africa whose work was…
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Jenny Berrisford

28/11/1940 – 10/8/2018 Jenny B is one of those rare people who left a double legacy in her community: invisible and visible, in our special memories but also in so many landscapes around the villages of the Kogelberg. Those special memories - Jenny telling a story with verve then our unstoppable laughter, her tales of early days in Pringle, Jenny smiling, gracious, defending the right, fun on BotSoc expeditions – Gifberg, Groenfontein. Hardworking always, Jenny qualified as a horticulturist at the then Cape Technicon while mother of four busy children and running an export protea…
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Visiting the most threatened habitats on earth

“Hello my name is Robbie and I am a proteaholic. It’s not really helped by the fact that my boyfriend has P.O.C.D. (protea obsessive compulsive disorder) too. I can’t help it. I just can’t get enough of the proteaceae! It all started as a child, as these things often do...” - An excerpt from a blog post by Robbie Blackhall-Miles, a plantsman and conservationist in North Wales, and founder of FossilPlants, a conservation endeavour which he describes as “the home of our prehistoric garden in North Wales”. Most of the plants in the FossilPlants garden…
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Kogelberg BotSoc AGM Annual Report

Botanical Society of South Africa : Kogelberg Branch AGM 21 July 2018 Annual Report - By Tim Attwell, Chairman  It is more than appropriate to begin this Annual Report by paying tribute to our former Chairman, Merrilee Berrisford. (Merrilee correctly insists that the word is indeed ‘Chairman’ and not the neologism ‘Chairperson’, since the ‘man’ in the word ‘Chairman’ refers to the Latin manus, a hand, and not to the male gender of Homo sapiens.) Merrilee has guided, inspired and managed the Kogelberg Branch of the Botanical Society with a vigour and enthusiasm that is impossible…
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