Kirstenbosch Gardens

One of my favorite places to visit while in Cape Town is the Kirstenbosch Gardens. This is one of the greatest botanical gardens in the world. The cultivated garden area, covering  almost 90 acres in a beautiful residential neighborhood,  sits at the foot of the eastern slopes of Table Mountain offering a splendid view of the famous mountain. The gardens were established in 1913 to promote, conserve and display the rich and diverse flora of southern Africa. It was the first botanic garden in the world to be devoted to a country's indigenous plants, and the garden is renowned for the Cape flora particularly

There are several themed gardens within Kirstenbosch, but I especially love the protea garden which is most magnificent in the early spring and fall. It is a bit of a hike (20 minutes) from the entrance, but worth every step.

The protea flower is a variety of fynbos, a natural vegetation that occurs in a small belt of the Western Cape of South Africa. Fynbos thrives in nutritionally poor soils, frequent winds, dry and hot summers, and frequent fires (many of their seeds require fire or smoke in order to germinate). There are 4 groups of fynbos: proteas, ericas, restios, and geophytes. Proteas are the tall shrubs with big, feathery or leathery leaves and impressive blooms.

The King Protea is the national flower of South Africa.

                                                            KING PROTEA