Cape Town - A pale pink rose that turns green, a pink George lily, succulents with unexpected flowers, a delicate green Ixia.
Koos Myburgh is a plantsman, a collector of the rare and unusual. He’s also a generous gardener with beds that overflow with the ordinary and extraordinary, plants indigenous and exotic and everywhere a riot of colour.
Manicured lawns and neat flower beds may be attractive to some, but there’s nothing like a wild garden for a sense of joy and abundance.
A wild garden doesn’t mean just letting it do its own thing, however.
A wild garden requires discipline, he says, which may sound like a contradiction, but a lot of time and thought and effort goes into planting, cutting back and selecting his wild charges.
Myburgh’s delightful Raithby garden is one you need to visit truly to appreciate it. It’s set against a backdrop of the Helderberg mountains in the far distance and wide open spaces all around, a view he’s determined not to block with trees.
The only formal part of the garden are the quadrants, set around a large pond, and herein is the abundance.
“There’s a formal structure and within the beds there is mayhem.”
The mayhem has a colourful face: red poppies hover above lime green euphorbium; blou salie frames them. Geranium incanum with its delicate purple flowers pops up everywhere, along the gravel path, in the flower beds, among the new vine growth. Queen Anne’s lace, with its soft white heads live happily next to aloes.
And in among it all, there are roses.
“This is my garden, I love it,” he says, sweeping his hand across it. “I have colour in the garden right through the year.”
Myburgh seeks out plants wherever he goes, finding the unusual, the special and the rare. And the ones he simply loves. He’s got a collection of aloes he’s travelled over South Africa to find; his collection of agapanthus includes the newest hybrids.
His favourite is Agapanthus hanneke, an intense blue.
“This is a garden of volunteers. Many plants come up on their own – like those bougainvilleas there which rooted themselves. I don’t fight with them.”
The garden is not just pretty, it’s also useful. Myburgh is an events organiser and picks and uses many of the flowers, especially the greenery, for his business.
A blight has killed off his cypresses, which formed the skeleton of the four sections, the first thing to be planted in the garden when he designed it 12 years ago.
The roses can be seen peeping out between the irises and the flowering lophomyrtus.
“I started out with beautiful roses – icebergs and Just Joeys. I also have 20 Greensleeves roses – a pale pink rose that turns green.”
Day lilies, irises, shasta daisies, gaura, fennel and agapanthus grow together in different combinations, alongside Queen Anne Lace, helichrysum with its silver grey leaves. There are remnants of a box hedge here and there.
“My favourite plant is this yellow linaria, which I grew up with here on this farm. I found a little piece down the road and lovingly moved it. It makes little plantlets, and I have planted it all over.”
His “volunteers” pop up everywhere and he lets them be – four Leonotis leonurus, (wilde dagga) plants have multiplied into 20.
“When my aloes have finished flowering, I leave them so the seed can mature and fall.”
“I don’t nurture everything; I encourage them, but they have to happen.
“I love Kniphofia (red-hot pokers),” he says and a few are still flowering.
Birds and insects are drawn to this garden, which has many indigenous plants. “There’s a rooibek sysie (common waxbill)” he points out. “I have clouds of them sometimes.
“ We see a green sunbird, and a chameleon.
“I don’t spray pesticides, there are lots of chameleons here.”
Around the formal quadrants Myburgh has planted a band of mainly indigenous plants, cycads from seeds and seedlings, and Giant Proteas. He collects aloes: “I travel South Africa looking for interesting aloes – I have an Aloe arborescens with a dark peach orange flower.”
There’s a wheelbarrow full of today’s nursery shopping. Where will he put them? “We’ll find a spot,” he says.
Keeping a garden wild but not out of control requires discipline and time. “Every weekend I try to spend a day in the garden, and three evenings a week for two to three hours, trying to stay on top, cutting back and feeding.”
Myburgh has clumps of different bamboos – one has a stem with green and yellow stripes; and he has a black bamboo.
“I’ve always loved plants and flowers, my main inspiration came from my grandmother who was a keen gardener, with lavenders and roses and pansies,” says Myburgh.
There’s a nursery area where he plants from seeds and cuttings, and a vegetable patch. So many nooks to explore – a wonderful garden to visit if you have the chance. - Cape Argus