South African Terraces
Plant families from the Northern Hemisphere collide with those from Australia and South America.
South Africa TerraceVentnor Botanic Garden
Our South African garden presents a cacophony of vibrant colours. We've abandoned the usual English style of orderly, graduated height, clumped border planting and developed a dynamic style more akin to the fynbos, a distinct biome found only on the southern tip of Africa.
Our Curator describes it as throwing mixed seeds by the handful to create a structure not often seen in gardens – a sort of painter’s palette.
South AfricaVentnor Botanic Garden
Plants use colour and shape to attract pollinators such as insects, birds and mammals. In the fynbos region of the Western Cape plants must go from seed to seed, germination to flowering, pollination and seed production, within short periods determined by available rainfall and fire regimes.
South Africa TerraceVentnor Botanic Garden
As a result both the plants and pollinators have short life cycles – all the more reason to use bright, strong colours due to competition for many types of pollinators with relatively few individuals of each plant given the diversity of plants.
South Africa TerraceVentnor Botanic Garden
Lampranthus spp. are a favourite with showy loud colours which feel like fake silk flowers. The red hot pokers or Kniphofia, tell an evolution story - although looking like an arid plant, some grow in moist poorly drained environments after years of evolution.
South Africa TerraceVentnor Botanic Garden
At VBG soil is neutral to alkaline, so we can only present a tolerant range of South Africa plants. Selected short-lived perennials like Euryops and Osteospermum thrive at VBG, so we present large expanses of both, sweeping down over the hot, south facing terraces.
The colourful display lasts into the very depths of our winter. We then enter a nail-biting period of cold and damp which, if extended, could wipe them all out.
The South Africa TerraceVentnor Botanic Garden
As a fall-back, a “lifeboat” stock is propagated during autumn to overwinter under glass. Nearly all the plants present in the South African Terraces are self-sown consistent with the Ventnor Method.
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Go beyond the garden
See the natural South African terraces for yourself
