Tessa De Wet - Cape Green Forum

I was recently fortunate enough to be part of
KWAZULU a wonderful group of people from the green industry on a whirlwind tour of KZN.
Despite September being one of the busiest
TOUR IN months for the retail nurseries, it was well worth
two days away to gain inspiration, netSEPTEMBER spending
work with colleges and have some fun!
Wednesday morning started off with an early
Tessa de Wet
flight into the new King Shaka airport just north
Plants on 6th
of Durban. We kicked off the tour with a visit to
the gorgeous Zimbali residential estate near Ballito. Development began there in 1994 and I really liked the fact that they
did not cut down any trees in order to build the roads throughout the
estate. This obviously means some narrow, winding roads and interesting stories about traffic fines issued! The estate horticulturists have some
different challenges – they have a high population of bush-buck and
cane rats. We were very privileged to be taken around by Geoff Nichols,
prominent horticulturist, author and indigenous plant expert. Everyone
that we met in KZN spoke about the drought that they are experiencing. In my opinion the area did look dry; not the lush green tropics that I
recall from my childhood holidays in Umhlanga. The natural coastal forest of Strelitzia nicolai and Milkwoods made a big impression on me. It
reminded that I do in fact like the “Wild Banana”- but only in its natural
environment and not in a small town-house garden!
NATAL
•
Our next stop was at Driefontein nursery, a colourful retail outlet with
an excellent selection of herbs, vegetable and annual 6 packs. I was most
excited to find a Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) in full bloom. This
was the first that I had seen one in real life, having admired pictures of it
books before and wishing that I could grow one in my own garden. The
colour of the flowers are surreal and no photograph could do it justice.
After Driefontein we had a quick visit to the new Moses Mahbida stadium near Durban city centre. We all rode the funicular to the viewing
platform at the top of the arch, 105 m high, where fantastic views of the
city and coast were enjoyed, even though some had very shakey knees..
From there we drove south to visit the first wholesale nursery of the
tour, Airley Farms. The main focus of their business is indoor foliage
plants for the rental industry and they also supply retailer with a beautiful range of indoor colour. It was quite something to see the Dracaenas growing out in the open fields, unlike here on the West Coast
where it is treated very much as an indoor plant. We stayed over at
the Blue Marlin Hotel in Margate and enjoyed some interesting south
coast cuisine.
Thursday started out with a visit to Planthaven Wholesale Nursery,
where Peter van Rooyen and his father grow a broad range of Hibiscus
as well as a lot of colour pots for the retail industry. We then stopped
at Twin Streams farm and were very impressed with the scale of their
Dracaena propagation. Their wormery was also quite fascinating.
After a much needed lunch at the Margate Country club, it was back
in the mini-buses with about a three-hour drive to our last nursery for
the day - Blackwood Nursery just outside Pietermaritzburg.
It was great to be chauffeured around and not have to worry about
the driving. During our travel time there was lots of chatting, lots of
laughs about the ability of the silver bus to miss turn offs, nurseries, etc
and probably a few deals happening too.
For many of us Blackwood nursery was the highlight of the day and
a very good example of what a retail nursery should look and feel like.
A family run business on an old citrus and avocado farm that came
about almost by accident, had us all a twitter over their stunning perennial borders, well-kept lawns and interesting accessories. Personally I felt the place oozed country charm without being clichéd. Maybe
the excellent coffee and scones influenced me though!
That evening we
attended the prizegiving function of
the Sunday Tribune
Garden show at the
Royal
Agricultural
Showground in Pietermaritzburg, dressed
in our glad rags!
All of us wished we’d
had more time to
explore the displays
and stands during
daylight hours but
despite the time-limit
I gained much inspiration from the show-gardens. I have made up
my mind to visit again next year and savour the sights over two days!
There are many fresh ideas to be found and I can guarantee that if we
hadn’t been flying back to Cape Town we would have bought a few
truck-loads of plants between us.
In summary I would highly recommend a tour of this kind to anyone
in the green industry. It was a first for me so I didn’t know what to
expect but I was impressed with the organisation and variety of visits.
Many thanks to Di for organising everything and for her driving
skills, she was unflappable in this regard! Also thanks to Peter from
Neutrog for his driving duties.
(Pics: Geoff Nicholls at Zimbali; the group at Airely Farm; the Moses Mahbida stadium with viewing platform on top and Peter van Rooyen of Planthaven inhis new multispans with some of the group)
The view expressed are not necessarily those of the CGF. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the contents. The CGF cannot be held responsible for any errors.
THE CAPE
GREEN TIMES
62nd EDITION
Sept / October
2 0 1 0
NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY THE CAPE GREEN FORUM
P.O. Box 5513, Helderberg, 7135, Cape. Tel: 021 855 0092 e-mail: cgforum@iafrica.com www.capegreenforum.co.za
It is with great pleasure to officially welcome our new chairperson, Suzaan Carinus. Suzaan has been involved with the Green
Forum committee for the past 3 years and kindly took up the invitation to be our vice chair last year. She has shown both dedication and commitment to the forum and its functionality, proving a valuable asset to our committee and members. Suzaan a
warm welcome from all of us, we wish you well and look forward to working with you.
As outgoing chair I would like to take this opportunity to thank
both Di and the committee members for all their time, dedication and devotion to the forum. For those people who have
worked on and with committees, I am sure you will understand
the amount of personal time that goes into this. So much of this
goes unnoticed and often not really understood. Thank you all
for your assistance and ongoing support, it’s been a pleasure
being able to work with you.
Scott Hogg
The intrepid KwaZulu Natal travellers at Blackwood Nursery. Companies
represented were Shadowlands, Think Ecologic, Plants on 6, Neutrog,
Harry Goemans, Nonke, Super Plants, Arnelia and Pearl Valley Golf Estate.
The Spring Trade Day has come and go... how time flies! As usual, the exhibitors went to great lengths to create wonderful, creative stands, in record time.
Builders Warehouse Distribution Centre provided a convenient, easy to off-load
venue. The stands were built in record time.
Well done to our stand winners, they were
Arnelia Proteas - 1st Plant, they won R2000 SOIL & MORE RELIANCE product
Soil & More Reliance - 1st Allied, they a free 3x3 stand at the February Trade Day
New Plant Nursery - 2nd Plant, who won 1/2 ton NEUTROG product
Efekto - 2nd Allied, who won a set of pots from POT PORT
Nonke Plants - 3rd Plant, a folding saw from CAPE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS
Neutrog - 3rd Allied, who won a meal voucher to TASTE BUDS RESTAURANT
Our thanks goes to the following:
• Robyn Schoeman & Lawrence
de Mink our esteemed judges for putting so
much time & effort into judging the 60 stands.
(Seen in the pic above with the stand winners
WHOLESALE NURSERY
- Mia, Soil & More and Hans, Arnelia.)
• The Alphen Hotel & Spa for part sponsoring
Specialists in quality
the lucky draw prize, won by Neil Major.
specimen trees & shrubs
• A big thanks to all the exhibitors, without
you there would be no trade day.
We’re considering changing the name to
something along the lines of...” The Gypsy
Cape Green Trade Day”! As once again we’ll
be looking for a venue. So please keep your
ears and eyes open for a suitable place - we
need ±4000m2, with parking for ±250 cars.
Easy access for big vehicles at a fairly central
location. We only need it for 4 days, Monday
Raymond - 072 239 3840,
14 to Thursday 17 February - not such a tall
Telfax 021 782 2612 (Redhill/Scarborough)
order....!
Ashley - 082 411 1355,
Please if you have any suggestions or conTelfax 021 852 6187 (Grabouw)
tacts call me - Di: 082 376 0377
INDULI
ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE PLANT
PROTECTION
• Organic Pesticides/ Fungicides
• Natural predators/ predatory fungi
• Specialized organic feeding
• Irrigation control equipment
• Disease diagnostics laboratory
• Plant Pathologist consultant
• Plant feeding consultant
Pieter Smit cell: 0824918458
Email: info@kanik.co.za
Since 1st September is Spring
Day in South Africa, Wednesday
25th August at
the Cape Green
Trade Day proved
to be a pre-Spring
and
pre-Arbor
Robyn Schoeman Week sample of
Aspect Landscape a blooming good
Architecture
season! A perfect
day was ordered
from the weather man and with all 60
stands under one roof, comfortable aisles
and supplementary natural lighting, it
proved to be a great day to take a few hours
off, away from the pressures of deadlines,
to acquire & update information from the
various stands, connect & catch-up with
people in the industry, and view
fresh and appealing items on display at the new venue, Builder’s
Warehouse in Parow Industria.
Lawrence de Mink from Stodels
and I served as judges of the displays and presentations, which
was fun & interesting, but with
the criteria for assessment of
each of the stands, it was certainly more than a “walk-in-the-park”.
What was interesting, with Lawrence coming from a retail background and myself from a more
design-related background, was
that we carried out stand assessments independently and yet, at
the end, we managed to concede
quite easily on the top 3 exhibitors in each
category from the 34 plant-related & 26 allied trade stands.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Spring has sprung
in our beautiful
Cape and with it
increased
TO YOUR comes
activity of the
feathered
kind
in your garden –
Carolyn Pleass
hopefully!
Trees & Hedges Nursery If you wish to
www.treesandhedges.co.za encourage more
birds into your
garden, there are
many different trees and shrubs you can
plant to entice them in.
full of sweet nectar that will have the sunbirds flocking to your garden. They also
love the good old Strelitzia and the wild
dagga (Leonotus variety). Another winner
is the Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis) which is available in a variety of beautiful colours. Plant it in a sunny position and
keep the soil damp. It can be left to grow
as a shrub in a bed and given a light pruning to keep it in shape or grown up against
a fence to form a hedge, clipping it twice a
year to keep it nice and neat.
The bladdernut (Diospyros whyteana) gets
a beautiful delicate cream flower followed
by a fruit that slowly turns red and is a hit
with many birds. Plant any of the Buddleja
family to encourage butterflies and bees
to your garden, as well as some lavender,
which always looks attractive, smells nice
and keeps the bees very busy!
The African holly (Ilex mitis) is a beautiful
indigenous tree that can get quite big and
SPRING
TRADE
DAY
•
BRINGING
BIRDLIFE
GARDEN
•
The tree fuchsia (Halleria lucida) is definitely one of the firm favourites of the
beautiful little sunbirds. Plant it in a position that is fairly sheltered from the roaring
winds, in full or semi-sun and keep the soil
damp. It is a fast grower and gets tiny orange bell-shaped flowers on its branches,
Thomas Edison is quoted as saying: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like
work” and Vince Lambardi is quoted as saying: “The measure of who we are is what we
do with what we have”. With those words
in mind and evidence of all the hard work
that was put into the displays at the August 2010 Trade Day it really should not be
missed. Some stands were built on the day,
others arrived at the exhibition in antique
“skadokkie” trucks, some displayed a wellfounded proudly South African spirit with
beaded SA flag butterflies. The attention to
detail & the extent of the effort was nota-
ble. Well done to all those who carried out
the unseen hard work behind-the-scenes,
resulting in an event that is consistently
drawing over 400+ visitors . . . of course
the beverage on arrival was an unexpected treat too!
Many thanks to the Cape Green Forum and
Di for all the organizational aspects that go
into making this day a success.
Nature also came to the party and, as always, never ceases to impress!
With growing pressure on the nature and
extent of urban development, increased
requirements to consider environmental
aspects in construction and design, as well
as education and pressure on individuals to become more responsible for the
way we treat our Mother Earth, the “green
trades” seem likely to receive more and
more focus and attention - it is up to each
of us to be fine stewards of our
industry. We certainly seem to
be up for the increased challenge.
Looking forward towards the
last quarter of 2010, let’s continue to raise the bar in the
industry as well as in our individual stance toward the environment, with the following in
mind:
“Unless you try something beyond what you have already
mastered, you will never grow.
Every job is a self portrait of
the person who did it . . . Autograph your work with excellence.” Vince Lombardi.
gets covered in tiny red berries that the
birds love. Plant it in full sun and keep it
well watered. It makes a beautiful and neat
feature tree.
The Cape Robin loves the Kei apple bush
(Dovyalis caffra) and the Natal plum (Carissa macrocarpa) as it likes to nest in these
thorny plants that also give delicious fruit
(that can be eaten by humans too).
Carissa macrocarpa flower
Visit http://w w w.capegreenforum.co.za
TREE PLANTING
WITH
TREES4SCHOOLS
•
Pascale Hoare
On Wednesday 8th September 2010,
Trees4Schools was once again back in a
school planting trees. A total of 40 trees
were planted including 10 Water Peach,
10 Water Pear, 10 Milkwood and 10 Yellowwood. It was an exciting day as the
prefects rolled up there sleeves to help
the Trees4Schools planting team get the
trees in the ground. Trees4Schools also
plan to roll our a vegetable garden once
the school has shown they are invested in
looking after the trees. Thanks to everyone
involved in making this happen!
Thanks to Rolan and his team for all the
hard work digging the holes!
For a report for how the trees are faring
please contact pascale@trees4schools.org
Attendance to the 35th Sunday Tribune Garden Show was 21 000,
10% up on that of 2009. Numbers from out of Province were estimated to be in the vicinity of 4 000, including some 300 from abroad,
with the largest representation being Johannesburg, Pretoria and
Cape Town.
The event, deemed by many to have been the best ever, saw a wide
variety of top class horticultural exhibits, with little of the trinketry
or bric-a-brac pervading so many South African shows in modern
times.
The highlight of the occasion has always centred around the magnificence of the Sunday Tribune Parks Hall, and 2010 was no exception.
CEO
The show continues to draw the participation of numerous municiRoyal Agricultural
pal
and corporate organisations and amongst various newcomers,
Society of Natal
the event was privileged to host Cape Town Municipality and the
award winning display of the Pietermaritzburg Botanical Gardens.
Aside from feature gardens, the show saw the presence of a number of garden clubs and
amazingly it was one of these - that from Cramond - that achieved the highest point’s score
of all participants in the show.
For the first time, the public were invited to participate by way of a four square metre mini
garden and with twelve entrants; all were pleasantly surprised at their ability to think ‘out
of the box’.
The Ready, Steady Plant contest each day attracted
large audiences and with the participation of professionals and novices, a great deal of inspirational fun
was had by all.
The show continues to concentrate on bringing school
children into the mix, and Hall One included some two
hundred outstanding displays, of various designs and
sizes. Again, the unfettered talent of young people,
some as young as ten, proved to be a stimulating experience and a source of delight to both judges and
the public alike. There were also up market displays
focussing primarily on holidays and travel.
In terms of mode, format and horticultural design excellence, there is no equivalent (in the southern hemisphere) to The Sunday Tribune Garden Show and 2010
again exceeded all expectations.
Vegetable & flower wall on the Cape Town
Municipality stand - they were awarded 5th place
2010
SUNDAY
TRIBUNE
GARDEN
AND
LEISURE
SHOW
•
Western Cape Growers, with the
backing of the Garden Centre Association in the Cape, have created a Cape
“Water-Wise” logo, which will feature
on a selection of “water-wise “plants
over the coming dry season.
A Cape “Water-Wise” plant list has
been created with the help of >10
growers from the region. These plants
will be identified by the round “WaterWise” sticker above, except the colours
will be blue and green.
The list has been divided into different categories, then split into indigenous or exotic. Retailers will be able
to use the list to educate staff and customers about “Water-Wise” Plants.
Water is scarce and it’s the responsibility of the green industry to promote
plants that are not thirsty.
Posters will be available for nurseries
to download and print, defining and
explaining ‘water wise” gardening.
Suzaan from Nonke Plants has set up
a facebook page called “The Garden
Club” in an attempt to get a new, different group of people talking about
gardening and the experiences trying
to garden.