An object of beauty and great botanical importance
Makhanda-born Michael Lutzeyer says groundbreaking ‘Grootbos Florilegium’ book documents 930 species of fynbos, including seven previously unknown
Spectacular views and a hankering for country life convinced Makhanda-born Michael Lutzeyer to buy a piece of Western Cape called Grootbos in 1991.
Little did he know he was sitting on a magnificent floral kingdom, now represented in a stunning book of botanical art, the Grootbos Florilegium.
Heiner Luzteyer, his father, began documenting hundreds of species of fynbos, some completely new to science 25 years ago.
Building on his father’s legacy, Lutzeyer commissioned 44 botanical artists from all over the world to capture the intricate beauty of the Cape Floristic Region.
The result is Grootbos Florilegium, a unique and superbly crafted book containing 120 detailed and spectacular botanical artworks.
Lutzeyer moved with his German parents to Cape Town when he was a baby, but school holidays spent with a family friend on a pineapple farm on the outskirts of Makhanda left him with a deep desire to own farmland.
“I bought Grootbos because of my youth spent at Endwell Pineries,” says Lutzeyer, who was flown up to spend holidays horse riding and enjoying country life near Makhanda, where he was also later to fulfil his national service.
“In 1991, my parents, wife and children went camping in Gansbaai and we saw a sign that said ‘farm for sale’ and like all South Africans, I wanted to own a farm and I fell in love with it; with the views of Walker Bay. “I had no idea it was a botanical treasure.” A few days later and with financial help from his father, who was smitten with the pink Pelargonium growing in abundance on the land, Lutzeyer bought Grootbos for R375,000 and set about installing five rustic self-catering units.
“We would visit every weekend and loved it.
“I sold everything and moved from Oranjezicht in Cape Town to live permanently on Grootbos.
“My father loved the plants and I was launching the initial self-catering tourism product, but no-one came to stay! Not a single person!”
A few years later, and with a view to documenting the fynbos, Lutzeyer met and employed young botanist Sean Privett, a moment that was to be a life-changer.
Privett, the author of the Grootbos Florilegium, said he was astounded by the extraordinary diversity of the Cape Floristic Region when he first started working on Grootbos as a conservationist, guide and “jack of all trades” in 1997.
“Michael told me to think of Grootbos as my playground,” says Privett, now the director of conservation at the Grootbos Foundation, who addressed the audience at the book’s launch, fittingly held at the conservatory of Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in mid-November.
“I bought the land for the view and Sean showed me the jewel — the diamond — of an estimated 930 species of fynbos, with seven previously unknown in world. He is my mentor.
“It was always my dream to make fynbos sexy,” enthuses Lutzeyer, who over the years has remodelled Grootbos into a high-end luxury eco-lodge, recognised as SA’s best hotel on Condé Nast’s Traveller’s 2022 Gold List. “Tourism is massive now,” says Lutzeyer.
So too is the scope and wonder of the eco reserve’s bounteous floral kingdom, as Privett and Lutzeyer’s father Heiner were to discover during their forays into the bush.
Though their surveys were captured in an earlier, less noteworthy field guide, he became convinced that Grootbos’s unique biome had to be documented in a more celebratory way and that this would best be done through the medium of botanical art.
To this end, world-renowned South African botanical artist Vicki Thomas was brought in to lead the way.
She did this by inviting 44 botanical artists from SA and all over the globe including Italy, Brazil, the UK, Zimbabwe and Japan in an extraordinary world collaboration.
“I identified the artists I thought should be there. They all love plants,” says Thomas, who invited the artists in groups to visit Grootbos, see the plants in their natural state and pick the one they most wanted to paint.
Artists spent hours in the field observing every plant’s cycle; its seed bursts, its blooms, its visiting pollinators, how it grows in its habitat. They photographed their subjects, took samples and headed back to their home studios.
After three months — some took longer — the artists, who called themselves “Grootbossies”, turned their works in to the Grootbos team.
“Every hand-in was an absolute joy,” says Thomas.
“Michael was so overcome by the beauty of the work — there were tears and excitement with every batch [of paintings].”
Setting itself apart from other botanical art is the additional detail of the pollinators and visiting insects.
Butterflies cling to stems, dragon flies dart about and bees investigate tiny flowers.
The idea to include more than just the plants came from Lutzeyer, who informed Thomas that he had two full-time entomologists on site studying the tens of thousands of insects Grootbos is home to.
The book is groundbreaking; an object of beauty and great botanical importance, but it is also part of Grootbos’s project of protection and conservation in the face of global deforestation and the ploughing of land for farming.
“This book is life-changing,” says Lutzeyer. “It fits into the zeitgeist of the time when we are all concerned with the natural world and its protection.”
All profits of this exquisite tome, published by Quivertree Publications, art prints and Grootbos Florilegium tours of the nature reserve and the new Hannarie Wenhold Botanical Art Gallery built at Grootbos, will go to conservation and cultural programmes.
“We invited top artists to paint the fynbos and all this art needed a house, so we built a botanical art house and it is the first florilegium art house in the southern hemisphere,” says Lutzeyer of the gallery.
In 2003, he and his family established the Grootbos Foundation, which not only serves to conserve the Cape Floral Kingdom but also ensures the upliftment of local communities so that the staggering diversity of this land is sustained for future generations.
“This is not a Grootbos project — we don’t own it,” says Lutzeyer.
“We are starting a movement to inspire people to care for plants and nature.”
*For more information please see www.grootbosfoundation.org