History or horticulture? How about a whole lot of both at Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden?

The Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden is one of the Cape’s most well-known tour­ism draw cards, as well as being a favour­ite with loc­als as a pic­nic spot. Any Cape Town guide book worth its salt will tell you about the Garden’s 528 hec­tares of indi­gen­ous flora and nat­ural forest (36 of which are cul­tiv­ated), its res­taur­ants, its hik­ing trails and its line-up of sum­mer con­certs. What they might not tell you about is Kirstenbosch’s very long and inter­est­ing history ...

It’s a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that just about all of Cape Town sprang into exist­ence only when European set­tlers planted their first steps on our shores. While it is true that most of our early archi­tec­ture and civil sys­tems can be attrib­uted to these intrepid trav­el­lers, there was life before Jan van Riebeeck — evid­ence of which was dis­covered at Kirstenbosch (among, of course, many other places) in the form of pear-shaped stone imple­ments and dig­ging sticks. It’s not much, but it’s the earli­est record of the site.

Following whichever mys­ter­i­ous stone-tool-wielding people were there first came the Dutch in the 17^th cen­tury, who planted a hedge of wild almond and bramble to demarc­ate the edge of the newly settled colony, parts of which exist to this day and are known as Van Riebeeck’s hedge. The forests on site were mostly har­ves­ted for tim­ber dur­ing this period.

Sadly, any hard record of the proven­ance of the name has been lost. Authorities believe it to have some con­nec­tion to Kirsten, a fairly com­mon fam­ily name in the area at the time and indeed that of the land’s man­ager in the 1700s, one JF Kirsten, which seems logical given the lit­eral trans­la­tion of Kirstenbosch as Kirsten’s Forest.

British colo­ni­al­ists fol­lowed on the heels of the Dutch, and dur­ing their occu­pa­tion two large grants of this land were made – one to Colonel Bird, the other to a Henry Alexander, both of whom built houses on the prop­erty, though the Colonel is also cred­ited with the con­struc­tion of the bath in the area known as the Dell. Sometimes referred to as the Bird Bath, because of the Colonel’s sup­posed hand in its con­struc­tion as well as its shape, this sunken pool at the spring of the Liesbeeck river within the Dell is more com­monly known as Lady Anne Barnard’s Bath. The wife of a colo­nial sec­ret­ary, Lady Anne is most fam­ously known for her pub­lished travel diar­ies of life in the Cape and for her author­ship of the bal­lad Auld Robin Gray. However, she is also more infam­ously remembered here for her scan­dal­ous habit of bathing nude at the Cape of Good Hope Castle, and is rumoured to have indulged the habit while on a pic­nic at the bath at Kirstenbosch.

Fast for­ward to 1823, in which both prop­er­ties were taken over by the Ecksteen fam­ily, who later passed the land on to the Cloete fam­ily, a clan who farmed the area as well as plant­ing oaks, fruit trees and vines. And of course, one can­not delve too deep into bits of the Cape’s his­tory without stum­bling upon our favour­ite erstwhile char­ac­ter, Sir Cecil John Rhodes. The illus­tri­ous colo­ni­al­ist pur­chased the Cloete family’s prop­erty in 1895 – only to let it fall into ruin at the, er, trot­ters of a herd of pigs, who fed on the masses of fallen acorns and wal­lowed in the area’s muddy pools. Luckily for the Garden, Rhodes died in 1902, upon which event he bequeathed Kirstenbosch to the people of the Cape as part of his Groot Schuur estate. Thanks Cecil.

Another his­tor­ical per­son­age deserving of our grat­it­ude is Professor H Pearson, a bot­an­ist from Cambridge University who came to South Africa in 1903 to fill the Chair of Botany at the South African College (now UCT). Professor Pearson deemed the land a suit­able site for the con­struc­tion of a botanic garden, and in 1913 took on the dir­ect­or­ship of the pro­ject, des­pite there being no salary pro­vi­sion in the £1 000 per annum gov­ern­ment grant. Nonetheless, liv­ing in severely reduced and dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stance, the Prof set about the mam­moth task of tam­ing the over­grown estate, com­ing up against such obstacles as the ruins of the Cloete homestead, orch­ards over­run with weeds, a Bath all but obscured by bush and, of course, the free-ranging pig­gies. Founded with the idea of pre­serving the country’s unique flora, Kirstenbosch became the first botanic garden in the world with this ethos — one that sur­vives to this day, with only indi­gen­ous plants cul­tiv­ated in the Garden.

Sadly, the dear old Prof died from pneu­mo­nia in 1916 at the age of 46, prob­ably due to his less-than-ideal liv­ing con­di­tions. He is bur­ied in the Garden, his epi­taph read­ing, ‘If ye seek his monu­ment, look around’ – a proph­etic state­ment given that some of the cycads he planted in the Dell are still flour­ish­ing today.

Since that time, a great deal of con­struc­tion has been con­cluded on the Garden, using Table Mountain stone for cob­bling, curb­ing, and the build­ing of wells, rock­er­ies and stone fea­tures. Though any work done nowadays is, of course, mech­an­ised, much of the early stages of devel­op­ment were com­pleted manu­ally — with the help of trol­leys and don­keys. The area of developed garden has stead­ily increased to its cur­rent, rather impress­ive size, and the Kirstenbosch Garden now enjoys its incarn­a­tion as a tour­ist attrac­tion and botanist’s bolthole. Guided walks are offered, as well as self-guide head­sets, for those who want to learn about the diverse plant life, and the tea room, res­taur­ant, gift shop, craft mar­kets and sum­mer sun­set con­certs pull thou­sands of vis­it­ors through the gates every year.

Over time, the object­ives and mis­sion of the Garden’s man­age­ment have evolved and changed, though there has always been a focus on the appre­ci­ation and pre­ser­va­tion of South Africa’s excep­tion­ally rich plant life. So next time you’re enjoy­ing a pic­nic on the sprawl­ing lawns, spare a thought for the Garden’s his­tory and his­tor­ical char­ac­ters by tak­ing some time to appre­ci­ate the beauty around you — and the absence of any curly-tailed fel­low picnickers.

Hours and fees:
The Garden is open 365 days a year.
Summer from 08h00 to 19h00 (September to March)
Winter from 08h00 to 18h00 (April to August).

Useful Links:
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens
Kirstenbosch Photo Gallery
Kirstenbosch Summer Concerts
Newlands Accommodation
Claremont Accommodation