Our Burning Planet

From exotic to indigenous – a groundbreaking guide to South Africa's rich plant diversity

The bright orange-red blooms of a Clivia miniata Image: Geoff Nichols

28 Apr 2025

Three of the country’s top indigenous plant fundis have been collaborating for more than 10 years to produce the most ambitious guidebook to date on South African indigenous garden plants.

In a world where city folk are glued to the hamster wheel of work and domestic chores, nurturing a small garden can provide a very welcome respite. And, it allows us to channel some of our creative juices into reshaping, redecorating or restoring our immediate living environment.

Whether it is maintaining a small veggie patch, a few pot plants or a more ambitious affair, recent research suggests that roughly 25-50% of adults in a wide range of countries now engage in some form of regular “gardening” activity.

Somewhat strangely though, many South African gardeners still opt for exotic plants from distant continents, in much the same way as we often know more about the history, literature or technologies of distant nations than we do about our own.

For some, indigenous gardens are still seen as either “dull” or “messy” when compared with the fragrant rose beds and manicured lawns or hedges reminiscent of the Gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

Until quite recently, this “West is best” approach has prevailed, even though South Africa is endowed with one of the highest rates of plant diversity in the world — with many of these plants found nowhere else in the world.

A low-maintenance aloe garden set among thorn trees near the town of Mkhuze in northern KwaZulu-Natal. (Photo: Guy Upfold)

Indigenous plant fundis (from left) Andrew Hankey, Elsa Pooley and Geoff Nichols spent more than a decade compiling the new guide book. (Photo: Tony Carnie)

But things are changing, partly due to increasing awareness about the rapid demise of Africa’s natural flora and fauna — and a realisation that many local plants are actually just as colourful, majestic or attractive as the foreign species that many of our parents planted out of habit.

The Durban-based Flora and Fauna Publications Trust has also played a key role in stimulating awareness and making new knowledge more accessible to local gardeners by publishing and raising funds to subsidise the cost of eight guide books since 1992.

The latest guide, South African Indigenous Garden Plants – The Gardener’s Guide, is the most ambitious to date and weighs more than an old Telkom phone directory for the Witwatersrand.

Unlike some of the previous guides that had a regional emphasis, the latest book has a national focus, showcasing more than 2,400 native plant species — all of which can be grown in local gardens (depending on the climatic conditions of where you live).

Though the featured plants comprise just over 10% of the country’s roughly 23,000 indigenous species, co-author Elsa Pooley notes that squeezing in descriptions and photographs of so many plants into a single book was a daunting and time-consuming project.

Pooley, who has been designing and landscaping public and private gardens for nearly 50 years, has written several plant guide books and also worked closely with horticulturist Geoff Nichols on several projects in KwaZulu-Natal.

Somewhere around 1999, Pooley and Nichols came up with the idea of a national guide on indigenous gardening and made a proposal to the Fauna and Flora Trust, but then they got busy or sidetracked with other projects.

Though townhouse complexes often have limited space, this example of a small succulent garden in Prince Albert in the Western Cape features potted wild olives, along with finger aloes, vygies and gazanias. (Photo: Sue Milton-Dean)

Pots of Pondo trailing jade brighten up a staircase to a family home. (Photo: Elsa Pooley)

Finally, about 10 years ago they heard that a similar book was being planned by Andrew Hankey, specialist horticulturist at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden in Johannesburg — so they invited Andrew to join them and pool their knowledge.

“None of us could have done this on our own. We just wouldn’t have had the time,” says Pooley.

Published jointly by the Flora and Fauna Trust and Struik Nature, the initial print run of 4,000 copies was all but sold out within two weeks of its launch last month, and Pooley is convinced that strong demand will continue, especially during the Chelsea Flower Show that opens on 20 May 2025.

Speaking at one of several book launches last month, Hankey said: “I wish there had been a book like this when I was still a student, because the literature on indigenous plants was very limited at the time. We were not able to include every single plant from South Africa, but the huge variety covered in this single book is groundbreaking.”

Gardening personality Keith Kirsten, one of several dozen co-sponsors of the book, also hopes that the guide will inspire more gardeners to embrace local plants.

Jane Troughton’s indigenous roof garden in Durban, leading off the main bedroom, mainly features succulent species, including several aloes, Pondo trailing jade and bulbines. (Photo: Grant Pitcher)

The avenue of fever trees lining Umhlanga Rocks Drive has become a landmark north of Durban. (Photo: SA Indigenous Garden Plants)

A white-bellied sunbird sips nectar from a mountain aloe. (Photo: Guy Upfold)

The cover page of South African Indigenous Garden Plants. (Image: Supplied)

A southern chief butterfly feeds from the flowers of a blue bitter-tea bush. (Photo: SA Indigenous Garden Plants)

The bright orange-red blooms of a clivia miniata. (Photo: Geoff Nichols)

“If we can just get people to grow a dozen indigenous plants each, that would be great,” says Kirsten.

Pooley noted that it was now possible to buy or source almost any indigenous plant from local nurseries, though there were still gardeners who believed they were “not colourful enough”.

Spread across more than 600 pages, the photographs in the book should help to dispel that notion, especially plants such as aloes, clivias, orchids or gazanias.

Categorised into just over a dozen sections, the plants have been grouped according to size and common characteristics such as bulbs, climbers, shrubs or trees, along with shorter insets giving practical advice on planning a garden from scratch or shielding plants from the impacts of frost and icy winds.

There is also a special section on “gardening for wildlife”, focusing on the best types of plants for attracting birds, butterflies, bees and other small species of wildlife back into the heart of suburbia. DM

South African Indigenous Garden Plants is available at Exclusive Books and several other bookstores and can be ordered online via www.floratrust.co.za or www.struiknature.co.za

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

Categories:

Our Burning Planet

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

Our Burning Planet