South Africa won gold at the prestigious Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show, in London, on Tuesday May 22 (“Nature and culture meet in Chelsea exhibit”, Bulletin April 19).
South Africa has won gold 36 times in the 43 years it has exhibited at the international flower show.
Designer and gardener Leon Kluge, of the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, and his team presented a culturally oriented display featuring South Africa’s unique flora against a backdrop of the the Cape Flats. “It’s gold!” Mr Kluge wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday May 23. The theme of this year’s exhibit, and Mr Kluge’s first design, is “Iconic Landscapes”, and the exhibit takes the viewer on a journey around the sub-continent.
Mr Kluge took over the reins from multi-award winning designers David Davidson and Raymond Hudson, who designed and created the Kirstenbosch-South Africa Chelsea Flower Show exhibit for 24 years.
The South African National Biodiversity Institute said it was “great news” and “what better day to receive the award than on International Day for Biological Diversity”.
