A Swartland garden

11 Sep '06 9:33 pm

Hello All. I've been a keen reader of Moosey's journals for the past five years, and finally have decided to join the forums!
Things move slowly in the Swartland!
We live in Moorreesburg which is about 100km from Cape Town in South Africa. Until about 2 months ago we travelled to Cape Town and back every day for work. Now I work from home and my husband has moved his office to our town, so we have more time to spend in our garden.
We've been here three years now, and have taken the garden from this:

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I've discovered that close up pics of flowers can make it look like you have a really good garden, even if its is still very much a work in progress, so I'll try to avoid those!

We are in a mediterranean climate ... fairly wet winters and very hot, dry summers. It gets over 40 degrees celcius here in the summer. Our ground has a lot of clay too.

The area where we live is called the Swartland, meaning 'black land' becuase of the indigenous vegetation, the renosterveld (renoster = rhino) which is the dark grey colour of a rhino. Most of it has gone now, to be replaced with wheat and canola fields.

Its springtime so the fields are also filled with wild flowers.

12 Sep '06 9:47 pm

Which in Afrikaans means 'Welcome to the Smits'- at last, fellow South Africans on board. Applause

AND from one of the most beautiful parts of the whole country Exclamation

I don't know about other people but I can't see or open your first 5 pics - only the last one. ASSEBLIEF! Post them again and keep the posts rolling in...

Jack

12 Sep '06 10:22 pm

Hi Jack ... yes, from reading the posts I thought you'd notice a fellow South African!
Not sure what happened to the pics ... but I'll try to post some more.
Today I have a team of workers mowing the back garden. We have 3300 square metres, and I don't think much had been done with the back section before we moved in three years ago.
So we started off by planting trees ... 18 of which have survived the past two years of severe drought. We have also put in big rain water tanks that collect the rain from the roof of the house. And we discovered a huge underwater tank, which was linked the resevoir (sadly demolished before we got here). We estimate that we have about 50 000 litres of water stored for this summer, so we should really be able to get things growing this year!

Our house is on the corner of our plot, which is great because it gives us lots of space to play! We overlook the golf course, which is what you can see at the bottom of the garden behind the mowers.

I'll see if these pics work, and if they do, I'll try re-posting those others.

12 Sep '06 10:26 pm

I thought I'd try again with a Swartland pic ...

12 Sep '06 11:52 pm

I thought I'd show you how our trees have grown, in spite of the drought.

Because our summers are so hot and dry, we thought it best to just concentrate on the trees for the first few years. And the last two years the drought has been severe, so the trees haven't grown very much ... its been enough for us that we have managed to keep them alive!

This year will be the first that the garden begins to really take shape.

We don't want big expanses of lawn, rather meandering paths and lots of shrubs.

Talking about paths, that's how I first found Moosey... I was looking for ways to garden around dogs, and found the dog path gardens. We have a rottwiiler x great dane and a boxer x alsation so they tend to trample anything that's in the way of their normal patrol paths!

13 Sep '06 1:42 am

Just thought you'd like to know.
Oh dear, this posting is getting addictive, and I should be working!
Veloren Vlei (Lost marsh) shows up on google earth becuase its a Ramsar site, famous for its birds and floral beauty.

13 Sep '06 4:23 am

Hi Lynne!

This time all your pics came through - lovely one of the view from Neulfontein! And lovely to have a record of a garden from its inception - and already something to show after two years of drought. THe nice thing about trees - ask me, I remember carefully lining them up in the shot so that one could at least see their autumn colour - is that they grow logarithmicly (if that is the word: next year they are twice the size , the year thereafter twice THAT size etc...) After 25 years I now have mature trees, and the joy they give grows ever more! And lovely to have a huge solid old Victorian house in a beautiful village, rather than - with all its 'lekkerte' - a city life! (And on the golf course with threes already established...)

I think I know Morreesburg - I had lunch at a lovely tearoom/nursery in an old house and garden on the east side of the main road on my way north from CT two years ago. Am I right? We were on our way to look at property which a friend om mine eventually bought, and actually drove along Verlorenvlei to Elandsbaai, Muishondskerm (midday Sad

), Lambertsbaai, through to Leipoldtsvlei(? don't have a map with me). He eventually bought outside Clanwilliam. It was a wonderful trip - but not as good as my 1990 visit in August-SEptember to look at the Namakwaland flowers - and right down to your area! One of the great holidays of my life! You must SELL the wild flowers to our friends on the forum!! It is truly one of the wonders of the world.

(And yes - watch out: this place is addictive!)

13 Sep '06 5:48 am

hello Jack
I don't know the tea room ... but we were spending so much time commuting in our first few years that we didn't get to have much tea!

Taking your advice to sell the west coast flowers... here is a pic of some more.

17 Sep '06 6:41 am

We've had a sudden, unseasonable burst of cold weather and rain .. good news for me becuse the pollen count seems to be down and I'm getting a bit of a respite against he hay fever. Do any of the other gardeners out there suffer from hay fever?

17 Sep '06 7:20 am

Lynne, Hello from me in New Zealand.
Thanks so much for posting the pictures. South Africa is a fascinating country, and of course we love using South African plants and bulbs in our gardens in New Zealand. It's a country that I suspect this humble gardener might like to visit soon! Please keep up the good work (that's in your garden and in this forum!).

Rustic fences rule!

A Swartland garden