Cape Town - Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens was once nothing more than a forest filled with alien vegetation, gravel trails, and corrugated iron toolsheds. That is a far cry from what it is today, but is how it looked when Edgar van Gusling and Andrew Jacobs first came to know the place.
Van Gusling, who retires this year, has worked at the botanical gardens for 45 years, while Jacobs has 37 years service with Kirstenbosch, which celebrates its centenary this year.
In recognition of their long service and the centenary, Van Gusling and Jacobs will fly to the Chelsea Flower Show this month in London, where Kirstenbosch displays have bagged 32 gold medals over the years.
Jacobs, 56, and Van Gusling, 64, were born in Protea Village, a now displaced community that was situated across the road from the botanical gardens.
Van Gusling recalls carrying 20-litre buckets as a boy to draw water from a nearby spring. There was a 100- litre tank at home that needed filling before he could go and play. Jacobs’s father worked at Kirstenbosch, and even though he was very young, he recalls delivering lunch to his dad at work.
In 1963, the Group Areas Act forced both families to relocate to Lotus River. Van Gusling was 15 and Jacobs was 6.
Van Gusling describes this as a sad time. “The houses (in Lotus River) had no ceilings and concrete floors. The walls were so thin your neighbours would hear you fart. We were thrown into this place that just wasn’t nice,” he recalls.
Employment at Kirstenbosch continued and at age 20, Van Gusling eventually got a job as a gardener.
“I grew up with flowers. In Protea Village, our hobbies were sport and nature,” he says.
Back then, there were no fancy hi-tech tools. “It was a lot of manual labour. We carried huge rocks with our bare arms. We were very muscular then,” he jokes.
Van Gusling moved from gardening and landscaping – he was involved in sculpting the contours and building rockeries – to being responsible for mowing and maintaining the lawns.
Anyone who has ever tried growing a lawn knows that getting it to the quality of the soft Kirstenbosch variety, is no easy feat.
He also did a stint as a security officer, but 20 years ago returned to the mowers – this time as a foreman. He is now the principal foreman.
“Everything I did, I enjoyed it,” he says. His green fingers have extended to his Rocklands home where he has a small but beautiful garden at the front of his house, and nurtures many indoor plants.
Jacobs’s career at Kirstenbosch started a little differently. He was the fifth of 12 children, and when he was about 17, he had to go and find work.
“I wasn’t really happy. But I was lucky and worked for a nice guy. He was one of the very few who didn’t see the (skin) colour,” says Jacobs.
He started out in the nursery in 1976 and while his father, who was employed at Kirstenbosch for more than 40 years, worked in another division, he kept a watchful eye on his son.
Jacobs had to weed, sow seeds and take care of succulents. He later moved to the plant recording department, where he engraved the names of plants on small plaques, and in the late 1980s became an information officer.
He recalls that learning about the various plants wasn’t a problem as he already had so much experience with that, but his English, on the other hand, took some work.
Remembering the move to Lotus River, Jacobs says it was unpleasant. “We weren’t rich, but when they took us to Lotus River, we became even poorer. The mice didn’t even want to come into our house,” he says”.
But five years ago things changed, not only for him, but his mother too. He became a communications officer and tour guide at Kirstenbosch and one of the perks was that he could live in the Kirstenbosch stone cottages, once part of his old community.
He moved there three years ago.
“It meant I could bring my mom back to Kirstenbosch. She was extremely happy when we fetched her. You could see the gladness in her smile,” says Jacobs.
His mother died a year later, but Jacobs, who says he still has another 10 years of working left in him, feels privileged that they were able to spend that time there.
Jacobs and Van Gusling describe Kirstenbosch as a special place, with a certain majestic quality.
“We have to be proud to be associated with this. People come from all over the world just to see it. There’s just something that keeps you here,” says Jacobs.
About their trip to London, they’re both excited to be going and plan to “paint the town red”. - Cape Argus