Soon the Open Day will be upon us and still plenty to do to get ready in the nursery. Fortunately most of the usual suspects responded to our plea and got going, sorting, naming, weeding, dotting and moving. The news signs make it a lot easier to identify and group the plants and will give […]

We chose to ignore the warnings of rain, after all, it said “clearing from the west”. The soil is now so saturated that we don’t really want to drive in the nursery because we make rather deep tracks but just walking from the office to the nursery one needs a wetsuit. It was still drizzling

Wow, just heard that this blog is read the world over, even in such places as the US, Australia and Great Britain so I better get off my backside, or rather on it, and do some postings. The AGM of the Algoa section of the Botanical Society was held at the reserve and the highlight

Last week was too wet so Wessa postponed their visit to this Wednesday. Pity because it meant that the Grahamstown contingent of 15 people could not take part. Ellie very ably led them on a grand tour from the Flower House to the arboretum and suitably impressed them showing what we all have done. I

We must be heading for a record rainfall season because the reserve is really waterlogged. The hacking crew got clever and decided to rather work on Tuesday and, even though it didn’t rain, they got rather wet just from the vegetation and the puddles anyway. We went on Wednesday as usual and when we arrived

Yesterday we bought the concrete mixer we had promised to Goodman a while ago to do very necessary work on the concrete gullies, planting poles and other maintenance work around the reserve. To put it together and hand it over was not quite in the plan for today but, on the way to the reserve,

Guest author: Rob Norton On Saturday 8th August I explored down the stream from under the power lines near the N2 down into the forest. Before reaching the forest it was noted that a large number of Port Jackson were present on the slope up to the N2, and they were coming into flower. A

I have been amiss lately to maintain this blog. Various reasons including lots of work at home with signage etc. which meant an overdose of Van Stadens with accompanying withdrawal symptoms. I will try and catch up but first here is a not exhaustive list (though just compiling it made me feel exhausted).

The week of bitter cold and rain certainly had its effect on the turnout for our monthly meet on a beautiful and sunny day. All six of us set out to walk the newly signposted 3Dam and Nymph trails. We made it into a slow botanizing amble, often stopping to try and identify some plant

I wish we could have this more often, 67 minutes of community service for Mandela day brought a group of Woodridge students to the Reserve and we got one group to work attacking the Podylarias under Rob’s supervision and another with Ellie and I creating some more paths in the arboretum. First they were welcomed