Biodiversity - South Africa.

The group said: “Biodiversity” and the camera captured smiles and fragments of a newly planted flowerbed. In the background, there was life in a township near Cape Town, South Africa, in an ordinary day of August. The group had spent the day working at Melton Primary School, planting small shrubs and flowers, filling the gaps with cuttings, weeding, raking, refining the edge and sweeping the path.

For none of those people, biodiversity was just a word.
Some of them were part of a three-year project that involves township schools, in the windy Cape Flats, in learning about the environment and creating new gardens. Indigenous flora brings back the roots in the sandy soil enriched with handfuls of bone meal creating water-wise gardens, knowledge and awareness. Vegetable gardens often complete the program, providing food for the pupils and work for community. Each year, five new schools are selected to join the greening project taking into account, among different requisites, their interest and enthusiasm. Then, teachers and community members begin the training by studying plant cultivation, soil, and propagation. This is the first step to establish lasting, sustainable gardens, followed by the need to involve as many people as possible.

Gardening is a demanding activity, and that day, help came from a group of people who was spending two weeks in South Africa learning about biodiversity.

I was in the group with: European garden designers, landscape designers, promising landscape architects and an experienced teacher of garden design. Suitable venues for our studies were, from time to time, Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, private and public gardens, natural reserves, museums and markets, wine estates and several restaurants. There, passionate experts introduced us to a variety of subjects: from fynbos vegetation to Bushmen culture, from the works in progress in a new children playground at Green Point Park to a marshland area where modern houses are built in a labyrinth of pools, streams, and canals surrounded by indigenous flora. In exchange, we worked. Our work had different shapes and sizes. It took seconds to pollinate a solitary cycad at Kirstenbosch, while more time and energy were required to plant beds of heathers before the rain, or to prepare a proper basket with fresh vegetables grown in the Cape Flats to be delivered in town.

Every day was different, and the outline of Table Mountain was never too far.


Table Mountain is part of the Cape Floristic Kingdom in Western Cape with around 9.000 species, of which 70% are endemic. The smallest of the six floral kingdoms of the world is an excellent example of biodiversity.

Biodiversity is the variety of life forms that lives in an ecosystem, or how late winter rains turn the ground into a carpet of daisies stuffed with bulbs, or smart succulents protect their leaves from the scorching sun. Or how, in a couple of years, proud children at Melton Primary School will see their garden bloom outside the windows of their classrooms.






Links:
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens – Cape Town South Africa
http://www.sanbi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&Itemid=57&id=139

Cape Town garden volunteers - London - UK
Ms. Patricia Walby organized the group of garden volunteers in Cape Town
http://www.capetowngardenvolunteers.co.uk

Photos:
Travelinagarden.