South Africa’s prestigious Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden has been forced to pull out of the world’s premier horticultural event, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Ironically, the overall show in London, will this year be sponsored by SA entrepreneur Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roos. SA gardening guru Keith Kirsten says it would only require around R1.5m for the Cape Town botanical treasure to once again bid for a gold medal, and host, as it regularly does, the British royal family.
Keith Kirsten on representing David Austin’s English roses in South Africa
For many years, alongside the retail garden centres, we always had an intellectual property company where we managed our plants bred by South Africans that we took abroad to Australia, the UK, Germany and the United States. We still do that. We manage the rights of certain plants, certain agapanthus, all kinds of things that are bred here. Some of them, in fact, are from South African plants. We also represent breeders from round the world; their plants in this country, the majority of the plants you see in garden centres. Those with a label on, with a bit of information that tells people how and where to grow it, and particularly leaning more towards Mediterranean and indigenous plants. We bring those plants back to South Africa if they’ve been bred abroad and sell them through licences throughout the country. We’ve got about 10 really good growers. We represent David Austin English Roses in the country and Ludwig’s Roses markets them. Then, on the other side, we have a very small team, but we do a lot of rather good quality landscape design and construction in the Cape and some around Johannesburg.
On the importance of the Chelsea Flower Show
For South Africa, which has exhibited for well over 50 years, I think it’s a very important shop window. It is really the mecca of horticulture, plants and flowers, and the environment for that matter. More and more work is being done on environmental education and gardeners. I think Koos Bekker and Karen Roos have done an outstanding job with a marvellous old estate that used to belong to the Hobhouse family. They bought it and [opened] a boutique hotel there. It’s called Newt, based on a small slug that lives in the streams and the wetlands there. I think it’s great that they are sponsoring the Chelsea Flower Show. It would be great if they co-sponsored or got involved with keeping the Kirstenbosch Gardens, the Kirstenbosch Botanical Society and the South African Botanical Institute going; which is the 10 national botanical gardens around the country that are semi-government and fall under the Department of Environmental Affairs.
On funding to help Kirstenbosch Gardens get into the Chelsea exhibit
The Botanical Society of South Africa, the Kirstenbosch branch in particular, was founded in 1913. The ground had been set aside by the city fathers of Cape Town as a place where South African flowers could flourish, and that’s been going on for 120-something years. Leon Kluger was the landscape designer who took over from my own designer, as well as David Davidson, who passed away, had a three-year contract. He did great and it got renewed. However, owing to Covid-19, I think they tightened the strings of the budgets within the South African Botanical Institute and they’ve decided not to go on with it. It is such a shame but I believe private companies would be prepared to assist in funding. There are so many South African companies that have made it big abroad, which could come forward and support it. In the days gone by, corporates like Old Mutual, Nedbank and many others helped to fund Kirstenbosch and get that garden into the Chelsea Show.
On Kirstenbosch being one of the top exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show
Raymond Hudson, together with David Davidson, had a lot to do with the gardens for over 25 years. Out of the 26 or 27 years that they did the gardens, I think they won 23 golds, two silvers and one silver gilt. They really did magnificent displays and were highly sought after by the judges of the Royal Horticultural Society. In fact, the queen or one of the royal family members made a point to visit the exhibit [Chelsea Flower Show] religiously every year. I’m praying we might be able to put something together by May.
Read also: