The constant garden

Bequeathed to "the united peoples of South Africa", Kirstenbosch has attained worldwide celebrity status. On the eve of its 100th birthday, Catriona Ross tells us why this garden matters

If you grew up in Table Mountain territory, Kirstenbosch was your preferred playground. Perhaps you too have imagined dinosaurs among the cycads, skinny-dipped as a student in Colonel Bird's bath, celebrated birthdays and rescued a pecked Woolworths chocolate cake from guinea fowl, Instagrammed the spring flowers, or lingered on the lawn after a Johnny Clegg concert with a bottle of Kaapse Vonkel. Walking through those turnstiles is a homecoming.

A hundred years ago, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden opened its gates. Van Riebeeck's Company Gardens had fallen into a sorry state of neglect, and by the 1880s leading citizens and botanists had begun lobbying for a botanical garden. Enter young Professor Harold Pearson, former assistant director at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, whose vision was to create a garden with laboratories to study and preserve indigenous flora.

As former National Botanical Institute director Brian Huntley describes in his book Kirstenbosch: The Most Beautiful Garden in Africa, Pearson went site-shopping one hot February afternoon in 1911, in a horse-drawn cart with two companions. They inspected the Groote Schuur Zoo but pressed on, and when they saw Kirstenbosch's famous entrance with its steep, forested slope up to Castle Rock, Pearson exclaimed, "This is the place".

The derelict farm Kirstenbosch, bequeathed by Cecil John Rhodes to "the united peoples of South Africa", was declared a botanical garden on July 1 1913, with Pearson as director. Donors posted plants from around the country to stock it, a nursery was established and a "shanty" was built to house Pearson and his wife.

A visitor described this as "two small, rat-infested rooms, damp in winter and dusty in summer". Thrifty, makeshift accommodation became tradition. "I was in a container for about a year, a shared container with two others," recalls curator Philip le Roux, who joined Kirstenbosch as estate manager 25 years ago. "In those days, there were always financial constraints."

Today, Kirstenbosch is simultaneously an international centre of horticulture and environmentalism, conducting research on climate change and land-use policies, and a Cape Town "Big Six" tourist destination with a Moyo restaurant and a stage from which Josh Groban, Elton John, Shawn Phillips and Cliff Richard have crooned over the pincushions.

Part of the Cape Floristic Region Unesco World Heritage Site, the 36ha garden sits on the hottest point on the world map of biodiversity hotspots, and has over 7000 species in cultivation, many of them rare and threatened species. A serial gold medallist at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show, Kirstenbosch is also our country's show-off floral centrepiece.

Much of its success is owed to the string of visionaries drawn to the garden over a century. Pearson died of burnout at 46 and was buried on a rise overlooking his cycad collection. In the '60s, environmental pioneer and curator Jack Marais began clearing the estate of alien vegetation.

"The Battle of the Road" in the 1970s saw Professor Brian Rycroft, then director, spend four years fighting the government's proposed elevated six-lane freeway through the bottom of Kirstenbosch.

In the '80s, local residents campaigned against a housing development scheme on a site later acquired for the Kirstenbosch Research Complex. Le Roux's predecessor, John Winter - known by staff as a "very strict guy" - established indigenous plant collections and painstakingly cultivated the yellow strelitzia, Mandela's Gold (on our cover), over nearly 20 years.

The garden was transformed into an outdoor classroom by legendary nature-study teacher Miss Muriel E Johns, who retired after 31 years in 1959. Today, 20000 scholars visit the education centre annually, and children are bussed in daily to learn about plants. Kirstenbosch has also seeded over 100 indigenous gardens in Cape Town's disadvantaged schools.

Crucially, Kirstenbosch changed with the times. In September 1956, the first entrance fee was introduced: a shilling (10c) for cars entering the garden at weekends. From 1990 to 2006, director and fundraiser extraordinaire Brian Huntley built up the infrastructure.

"He'd seen botanical gardens overseas and knew what facilities we needed," says Le Roux. "Captains of industry trusted him, trusted that he wouldn't just squander their money. He ruffled a lot of feathers - he never had a master plan people could look at; he had the master plan in his head - but he was driven to get things done.

He'd say, 'Let's go for it; the money will come' and the money did come. An English donor, the Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation, gave £1-million to build the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation, just like that."

Meanwhile, Kirstenbosch was becoming increasingly self-sustaining. International tourism began booming in 1994 (annual visitor numbers have now stabilised at around 750000) and summer concerts had started.

"Initially, we didn't even charge for them. The security guards walked around with caps and people would throw coins into them," remembers Le Roux.

In 2006, when a fire burnt 40ha of the 528ha estate, concert-goers exceeded 100000 and Kirstenbosch broke even. It has operated at a profit and received no further government subsidy ever since - a rarity among botanical gardens worldwide. Concerts now contribute a third of Kirstenbosch's income.

Yet financial headaches persist. The public, press, province and businesses had to rally to fund Kirstenbosch's trip to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show three years ago, and petty theft is a constant problem. "If things get stolen, I always say, 'It must be the tourists,'" Le Roux says wryly.

A brass National Monument plaque describing the garden's history is propped against his office wall, awaiting relocation. Originally bolted onto a rock, it was removed by a thief and spotted behind a bush by a Botanical Society member. Don't ask what it cost to replace the memorial brass plaques nicked off the benches one night for scrap metal.

There are victories, too. Through www.plantzafrica.com, where Kirstenbosch staff highlight a "plant of the week", a form of Erica verticillata, extinct in SA, was found in a collection in Vienna and cuttings were brought home in 2000.

Long-running staff institutions include the Kirstenbosch soccer team, and The Pretenders, a group of crooners who perform at functions.

Today, weather permitting, children are capering across Kirstenbosch's lawns, picnickers are laying out lunch, entwined couples are reading under the trees. One of the Seven Magnificent Botanical Gardens of the World, this patch of Cape Town remains humble, its earthy charms undiminished. Long may it grow.

KIRSTENBOSCH is celebrating its 100th birthday tomorrow with free entry to the garden for the day. Join a free Centenarian Plant Walk, 2pm to 4pm, booking essential on 0217998783.

The winter holiday programme for children is on now until July 12 and includes free entry to the garden for children 6 to 17, free walks, storytelling events and puppet shows. See www.sanbi.org/gardens /kirstenbosch for details.

SEE THE CENTENARY CHELSEA EXHIBIT

Kirstenbosch won its 33rd gold medal at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. Catch the recreated exhibit at Garden World in Johannesburg from July 25 till mid-August, and at the V&A Waterfront Clock Tower in Cape Town from August 31 to September 24.