The Useful Plants Demonstration Garden at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens has recently undergone a facelift
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Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in Cape Town has replanted much of its Useful Plants Demonstration Garden and given the interpretation Xhosa Hut at its centre a facelift, adding more information on plants used traditionally in South Africa for food, medicines, crafts, charms and cultural beliefs.
The Useful Plants Garden was developed in 2002 to highlight and share information about indigenous useful plants, to conserve threatened species, to study the best methods of their propagation and also to make the plants available to the general public.
The garden is divided into 16 planted sections according to traditional usage of the plants. These include plants used for food, beverages, medicine, hand crafts, dyes, and even erosion control.
There are over a 100 labeled species of useful plants growing in the garden. Labels include information on how each plant is used.
The makeover started in 2007 with the help of two students, Msimelelo Ngcaku and Enricho January, and a Botanical Society volunteer from the United States, Rosie McVay, who has been associated with the project since 2003. The garden is maintained by Nicholas van Wyk, an ever-willing source of information about traditional usage of plants.
The main focal point in the garden is the specially designed and constructed Xhosa hut with its remarkably low environmental footprint. It was constructed by a master hut-builder from kwaGatshana in the Eastern Cape, Philemon Zanazo. The walls were contructed using woven wood from invasive alien plants such as the Australian Port Jackson willow (Acacia saligna). Another alien invasive plant, eucalyptus, was used for the upright poles, but the endemic Cape thatching reed (Thamnochotus insignus) was used for the roof. The hut was replastered in the traditional way with clay and cow dung by MJ Nontsele, Thandile Mzukwa and Nicholas van Wyk.
New display information inside the hut includes three large posters supported by artefacts and plant material samples. The posters highlight aspects of traditional and commercial medicinal usage of indigenous plants and features a section on practitioners (including izaNngoma and iziNyanga).
During the replanting of the garden the original hard landscaping was preserved. Many of the plants have been replaced and include new strains of some species including amaBele (Sorghum bicolor) once a staple cereal for food and beer-making, and the calabash gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) used as a vegetable and for its gourds.
The garden also features important traditional medicinal plants such the pepperbark tree (Warburgia salutaris) so sought-after for its effectiveness in treating lung complaints and as a general tonic that it has now become endangered in the wild. There are also plants used by all cultures for tonics or health drinks, including the honeybush tea shrub (Cyclopia intermedia) as well as important traditional ritual plants, such as the aromatic imPhepho (Helichrysum odoratissimum) burnt to induce a trance and for communicating with the ancestors.
The transformation involved many journeys to source plants, seed and information from remote rural communities where the plants are still used. These journeys took Kirstenbosch staff from the Kaokoveld in northern Namibia and Angola where the last Himba people still survive, to deep rural rural amaMpondo communities in the Eastern Cape.
