South African Indigenous Garden Plants is the quintessential indigenous gardening guide for South African Gardeners.
This is a massive encyclopaedic vault of information! When I attended the book launch, at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, I was not surprised to learn that this book took ten years to write. This book explains everything you need to know about gardens in South Africa, across every region and every condition. This is truly a book filled with everything to love and a life-long treasure.
Meet the Authors
- Elsa Pooley: The author of several field guides and a has been landscaping and creating indigenous gardens for more than fifty years.
- Geoff Nichols: Started the first medicinal plant nursery in South Africa and is an award winning horticulturalist.
- Andrew Hankey: Is a widely published author, and a specialist horticulturalist at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens.
The book contains over 600 double page spreads filled with full colour photography, gardening magic and garden tips. It is perfect for dipping into, otherwise, because of the size, a good place to start exploring would be the contents page: with tips on how to use the book, fourteen different types of indigenous gardens to explore, as well as tips on attracting wildlife and maintenance, this is followed by a huge catalogue of over 2400 plants, described and photographed and ready for you to discover, as the perfect new companion for your garden.
I loved the indigenous and wildlife garden section… lots of inspiration on those pages… but the magic of this book is in the Plant Catalogue where pages and pages of plants are grouped and displayed, full colour photographs and a full description of each and every plant.
The variety of plants is incredible from fynbos to succulents, trees to creepers, climbers and shrubs, and even more. In each section there are distinctive features, like the tree section where there are pages of photographs of special features: like bark, flowers, leaves and fruit, for each tree. There are surprising details throughout this book and the kind of book that needs hours and hours of exploration.
And to top it off, there is a Plant Selector, that allows you to find plants that go together. If you are looking for plants to create a shady garden or a windbreak, plants to grow in a damp area or plants that can withstand a sea wind, then this section has the appropriate list for you to select your favourites from.
This really is the quintessential book for South African Gardeners. The kind of book that should never ever be on a bookshelf, because it is a book that needs to lie flat and be open. Its a coffee table book through and through, because you will be browsing to and fro, and finding interesting and incredibly useful facts, every time you dip into it. I love this book, it is extremely shareable and available on my coffee table forever and always.
Thank you to Happy by Nature and the National Botanical Gardens at Kirstenbosch for a stunning launch, and of course Struik Nature for the Gift of the Book. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are entirely our own.