Cape Peninsula Coastal Gardening: A little bit of wild, by Tara Dalton (Published by Tara Dalton)

As published in The Books Page, Bedside Books September

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I live on the edge of Zandvlei, about 4km from Muizenberg beach in Cape Town.

There are pretty views, but we get howling south-easters in summer (and spring and autumn and winter, judging by this year), and the wind is often salt-laden, withering tender shoots. The stuff laughingly referred to as soil is sand.

My sister-in-law, however, lives in Clifton, where in winter her garden faces the full force of Atlantic storms and winds.

Greenery covers what were once bare dunes at Clovelly beach

In short, the coast of the Cape Peninsula is a hostile environment for a keen gardener. I am not a keen gardener, but I do like my garden to look half-way decent.

Which is why I pounced on this fabulous book.

Tara Dalton, who studied history and law at Oxford, retrained as a garden designer and horticulturalist in the UK. She has also gardened in Australia and Cape Town, and understands hostile environments.

While creating an attractive garden is part of Dalton’s philosophy, there is much more. One concern is biodiversity loss caused by factors including urban and rural development. And this affects other species along the food chain, including invertebrates and birds that are vital for pollination.

Detail of the spring flowers on the Clovelly dunes

“When one aspect of the ecological chain is affected, there is a knock-on effect that leads to loss of species in both the plant and animal kingdoms.”

In 2013 the SA National Biodiversity Institute noted that at least 13 plant species that used to occur in greater Cape Town had been declared “extinct in the wild”.

What with urban development, a lack of awareness, invasive species, too many fires and, of course, global climate change, “we could lose not only individual species but entire ecosystems that have evolved over millennia”.

This beautifully illustrated volume is an important contribution to helping return nature to urban settings.

Dalton says in her preface she has focused on the Cape Peninsula as it is home to one of the most diverse – yet one of the most threatened – plant diversities in the world. Our peninsula, covering just 470km2, has more than 2 500 indigenous flowering plant species, and more than 160 of them are endemic to this area, meaning they grow naturally nowhere else in the world.

Compare this to the entire British Isles, covering more than 250 000km2, which has fewer than 1 500 indigenous plant species.

So this book is a celebration as well as a guide for peninsula gardeners.

It focuses on indigenous plants found in the coastal lowlands of the peninsula rather than those high in the mountains.

Dalton points out that along our coastline there are bands of soil – mainly acid and sandy, or alkaline and sandy – which determine which plants will grow well. The bands are fynbos, dunes, Cape Flats dune strandveld and seasonal wetlands.

Each plant entry is identified by which ecosystem it prefers, its eventual height, and whether it wants sun, shade or a mixture of the two. Then follows a brief description of the plant, and how to propagate it.

Occasionally individual plants are celebrated in a longer section, such as the Cape Sweetpea/ Okie Bean (Dipogan lignosus) a climbing perennial with lots of pink to purple flowers from August to January.

Dalton writes: “For the foodie or cook … the deciding factor is that its flowers and young pods are absolutely delicious raw in salads, and steaming the pods make for a truly worthwhile local vegetable…”.

It is tolerant of salt air, coastal winds, semi-shade and poor soils, is a soil enricher as a legume, and is pretty – all of which means “it really does deserve a place in coastal gardens”.

Prize-winning landscape designer Leon Kluge says in a foreword: “If this book inspires you to plant one indigenous species, to remove one inappropriate exotic, or to see your garden as part of a larger living system, then it has already done important work.”

PS: The other day, for the first time in a while, I went for a walk on Clovelly beach near Fish Hoek. There the City of Cape Town has been securing the dunes by planting a variety of suitable dune-loving plants, surrounding small areas with protective shade cloth.

I was stunned by the beauty and success of the project. Once barren and shifting dunes are covered in green foliage and spring flowers. Gardens on and near the beach can clearly be a success, if you have some idea of what you’re doing – and Tara Dalton’s terrific book will help you there.