South Africa’s triumphant return to the world’s greatest floral feast, the Royal Horticultural Society, Chelsea Flower Show in London this week, followed a hard and long journey.
Despite being absent from what was described as the Olympic equivalent of the flower, plant and landscape design world, for four years due to funding problems, South Africa returned in 2024 with a bang, or rather a bloom, winning a gold medal and awards for the Best Exhibit in the Pavilion and the Best New Design – a first for the country.
This year’s exhibit was inspired by the Cape mountains – a series of ranges that run from Cederberg, 200km north of the Cape Peninsula, along the coast for 850km to Gqeberha in the east. Large panels weave through the exhibit’s landscape as if carved by nature, creating an earthy backdrop for vibrant flora to take centre stage.
This year… five minutes before judging, we had a big dove coming to sit on our walls … and made his mark on our wall. It caused a lot of drama. The resilience is one of the reasons proteas are such successful cut flowers, capable of lasting more than a month in a vase and retaining their beauty even when dried.
“It’s a hell of a lot of work with a very short timeframe. It took one week to build and then one week for the flower installation. Then at the end of the two weeks is the judging, “The cracks in the clay represent our extremities in our seasonal change. We have a really wet, cold but very colourful and green winter in the Cape, in the fynbos. Then at the same time in summer, it’s really dry and the earth cracks open, and it’s the time when the proteas are resting a bit. That’s all necessary for them to be healthy,” he said.
Large panels weave through the exhibit’s landscape as if carved by nature, creating an earthy backdrop for the vibrant flora to take centre stage. “It took a few years for us to convince people that we can do it on our own here at the Chelsea Flower Show, and the Rupert Foundation provided a lot of the money along with Grootbos Nature Reserve.
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