I’ve just moved house from the outskirts of Cape Town’s central business district to the Cape Flats. When I saw my new garden, a windblown, sun-baked sandy wasteland, tears welled up in my eyes. Not out of disappointment you understand, but out of pure excitement. Cape Flats Fynbos is coming back to town.
The perfect beginning: an old beaten-up, sandy garden.
For people living in Cape Town the phrase ‘Cape Flats’ is a loaded one. On the one hand, it is a geographical term referring to the sandy flats that separate the mountains of the Cape Peninsula from those of the Winelands and Overberg districts. On the other hand, it may also conjure images of poverty-riddled townships and gangsters; it’s where the bulk of Cape Town’s four million people live and it’s pretty desperate in places.
Use bark chips in the soil for nutrients; scatter a layer on top to keep the sand damp.
Sun-loving Gazanias reward you with extravagant colours after a few weeks.
But there are gentler parts of the Cape Flats, and it wasn’t that long ago that the land was covered not by housing and roads but by Cape Flats Fynbos, a type of lowland fynbos rich in proteas and heathers as well as irises and sweet-smelling buchus.
Today there is less than 1% of Cape Flats Fynbos remaining, scattered across the flats like a dropped breakfast tray but luckily there are local plant nurseries devoted to its conservation, supplying fynbos plants to the public at a far cheaper price than exotic plants. But when it comes to growing the stuff back home in the garden, the trick is to be ruthless.
The Sea Rose (a type of Gentian) loves sandy soil & often grows near the sea.
Herbs & vegetables love sunny, sandy soil too: plant ‘picking veggies’ like tomatoes, chillies & peppers plus basil, thyme, oregano & parsley.
The plants go straight into the sand after a couple of bags of bark chips have been dug into it. No fertilizer, no compost, and try and get them in as much full, blinding sun as possible. Don’t worry about plant-eating pests either; fynbos plants are tough and chewy and have been working on their chemical defences for a few hundred thousand years – they are pretty much inedible to most things.
Psoralea pinnata is in the Pea family & needs more water than most fynbos plants; plant it in a lower-lying area.
A Yellow Pincushion Protea starts to unfurl its flower in the early morning sun.
Water the plants well for the first few weeks to help the plants get established, add a top layer of mulch or bark chips to retain moisture and then stand back: a floral extravaganza is on its way.
A Cape Flats endemic – Gladiolus angustus, the Marsh Painted Lady – found in a few scattered nature reserves around the flats as well as my garden.
hey Dom…can you give me a list of fynbos to plant…in Kommetjie ?
Will get bark etc…need ground cover.
And also, can you remove a pine tree from a neighbors plot..quietly ?!
Hey Craig – sure, there are plenty of plants that will thrive in those coastal sands, some good ground covers too. Sour fig is the most obvious but Arctotis and Gazania species (both daisy family) will love it there as well – they will spread and cover big areas with lots of flowers. Grow strandveld bushes like Wild Dagga, Brown Salvia and Rhus species – cut them back as they grow taller and they will get bushier and keep lower on the ground. Plant Limonium as well – Sea Lavender – loves hopeless dry sand and full sun and rewards you with huge purple flowers. Best place to get these plants is the Cape Flats Nursery at Zandvlei near Muizenberg.
Great info will pass to my son in mowbray
Hi Dom,
Do you know anything about Sugar Bush and what conditions they thrive under? I have read that the Cape Flats were richly adorned with forests of Sugar bush from which the settlers made a healing and delicious syrup
You are right: the Cape Flats were once carpeted in Sugar Bushes – my guess is in thick tangled stands of them – and were indeed used to make sugar syrup. Turn a fresh flower head upside down on a damp morning in April or May and sweet sugar water – as sweet as lemonade – collects in your hand. They like a bit of clay in their sandy soil – I suspect they were once very thick on the clay slopes of the Tygerberg hills – and they also once covered the lower slopes of the 12 Apostles. And like all these fynbos proteas, they must have unrelenting sunshine and wind! They are long gone from the Cape Flats and the 12 Apostles but can still be found in good numbers along Tafelberg Rd, Silvermine, Devil’s Peak and at Cape Point – the lower areas – often on what are called shale bands (strips of clay running through the sandstone) rather than on the higher mountains. By the way, it used to be SA’s national flower until 1976 when it was changed to the king protea.
hi – i am trying to replant my garden with fynbos and proteas etc, living on a sand dune
but it is expensive.
could you recommend a wholesale nursery ? or nurseries ? so i can get as many species / options as possible ?
i am in Noordhoek but willing to travel around the peninsula if i can get good prices xxx
ali
Hi Ali – get hold of Cape Flats Life http://www.enviropaedia.com/company/default.php?pk_company_id=1174
They used to be in Zandvlei but have relocated somewhere but get hold of them as they have perfect plants for dunes (strandveld plants) and are very very reasonably priced.