Our favourite Summer concert & outdoor movie venue, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, has scooped the Garden of the Year award at the 2015 International Garden Tourism Awards in Toronto, Canada, which are presented by the International Garden Tourism Network.
Curator Philip le Roux says Kirstenbosch is the flagship garden of the National Biodiversity Institute. He explains what makes the gardens so special. “The garden has in the last year gone from strength to strength.”
“It seems as if the Tree Canopy walk way has really been successful for us and our visitor numbers for 2014 went over a million visitors for the first time in the Gardens’ history. So all very good for the Garden and tourism in Cape Town.”
Not only is it one of the most stunning backdrops for events, concerts and weddings, Kirstenbosch displays a wide variety of the unique plant life of the Cape Flora. According to the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden lives up to its reputation as the most beautiful garden in Africa and one of the great botanic gardens of the world.
Few gardens can match the sheer grandeur of the setting of Kirstenbosch, against the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain.
Kirstenbosch displays a wide variety of the unique plant life of the Cape Flora, also known as fynbos, including sugarbushes, pincushions and heaths . Plants from all the diverse regions and biomes of southern Africa are also grown at Kirstenbosch, including a near-complete collection of cycads.
The Botanical Society Conservatory is a custom-built glasshouse to grow and display plants from the arid regions that cannot survive outdoors.
There are over 7 000 species in cultivation at Kirstenbosch, including many rare and threatened species.
