The gardener’s bucket list
KAROO DESERT NATIONAL BOTANICAL GARDEN
Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden in South Africa
When I first visited Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden, in 2005, it was a revelation – my first exposure to African succulents growing in the wild. Quiver trees, Namibian grapes and candelabra euphorbias, all emerging from a red earth carpeted with ice plants (vygies) and cape daisies in shockingly bright colours. I should say almost wild, as most of these plants were growing in
a botanic (or botanical) garden of 11ha, surrounded by 143ha of flora reserve, itself home to 400 indigenous plant species. Twitchers have the added bonus of
95 local bird species, all busy pollinating the abundant blooms.
Karoo is part of a network of 11 national botanic gardens in South Africa, each featuring plants of the local region. The succulent Karoo vegetation is adjacent to, and blends in with, the World Heritage Listed Cape Floristic Region, home to an amazing 9000 plant species. This is 20 per cent of the entire continent’s flora, growing in about a million hectares, which is a tiny fraction of the African landmass. More than two-thirds of these species occur nowhere else in the world.
I visited Karoo again in 2018 and was not disappointed. This time, the Hex River Mountains to the north were snow-capped, adding a whole different dimension to the spectacle. There were new plantings, including more quiver trees (Aloidendron dichotomum, formerly Aloe dichotoma), rescued from a distant mining site. Each sat high on a raised mound, which is apparently the only way to get them
established. Planting them in a hole dug into the shale leads to waterlogging and, for many succulents, death.
If you’re a succulent aficionado, you should try to take a tour of the collections under glass and shade. Here, you can see what is perhaps the world’s largest public collection of Haworthia spp. and its relatives, including the corkscrewed Haworthiopsis viscosa. Alongside these is a rich collection of bulbs, for which the Cape is rightly famous – take a look at the starfish iris (Ferraria variabilis) and rat’s tail (Babiana ringens) – and more succulents, some recuperating after being confiscated from plant thieves by wildlife officers.
Karoo is “the only truly succulent garden in the Southern Hemisphere and on the African continent”, according to Botanic Gardens Conservation International. The plants that grow here are tough and so, too, are the staff. The first curator of the garden in its present location (it moved in 1945) was Swiss horticulturist and one-time cattle rancher in Argentina, Jacques Thudichum. In the early years, he watered the plants from a bucket at the end of a yoke or balanced on the handlebars of his bicycle.
The current curator is Werner Voigt, who previously ran Harold Porter, another Western Cape botanical garden. He can provide a fascinating commentary on pretty much everything about the local flora and its history. In addition, there are
three horticultural staff, a teacher and an administrator, plus, as in many successful regional Australian botanic gardens, a bevy of talented and enthusiastic volunteers.
My overwhelming memory is of colour. Not tasteful pastels or cottage greys and mauve, but big, bold yellows, oranges and reds. That, along with marvelling at the bizarre and beautiful ways that plant succulence responds to a tough climate, was enough for me to plan my next visit.
NEED TO KNOW
Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden is just outside the town of Worcester, 120km north of Cape Town and an easy day trip by car. It is open every day of the year from 7am to 6pm. The best time to visit Karoo and the other two gardens mentioned is late winter to early spring, between late July and late September. Both my visits were in late August.