31st January 2019 – Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden – Martin Tayler's bird blog & nature photos

We couldn’t imagine coming to Cape Town without visiting the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden near Newlands Cricket Ground (where we spent yesterday at an international one day cricket match between South Africa and Pakistan).

Kirstenbosch is an important botanical garden nestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The garden is one of ten National Botanical Gardens covering five of South Africa’s six different biomes and administered by the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

Kirstenbosch includes a fragrance garden, a medicinal garden, 2,500 species of plants found on the Cape Peninsula, a Protea garden (best seen in spring!), a braille trail, and a cycad amphitheatre. There is also the Botanical Society Conservatory, which houses plants from the continent’s more arid regions. In more recent years we have been able to enjoy a walk along the Centenary Tree Canopy Walkway – affectionately known as the Boomslang. This 130-metre steel-and-timber bridge snakes its way through and over the trees of the Arboretum, providing stunning views of the Garden and the Cape Flats.

Tree Canopy Walkway

Here we have previously seen some really good bird life including sun birds, sugar birds and even a Spotted Eagle Owl. We wern’t so lucky this year but there were a few species of birds and butterflies and the flora was magnificent.

After our visit we went to the nearby vineyard of Groot Constantia and studied the vines (and enjoyed some of the results of the winemakers efforts).