Just before lockdown last year, my beloved and I moved from the mountain hamlet of Hogsback to a house on a coastal dune, where kikuyu grass had been planted without thriving.
Behind the house is farmland, where wilde els, afrikaners, arums, metalasia, vygies, felicias and dune daisies, christmas berry (chironia baccifera), bulbinella, buchu, salvia, podalyria, varieties of restios and other fynbos species make a life for themselves between invasive acacias and reeds (which the farmer clears occasionally). To our joy, we discovered that a healthy number of species of wild birds, tortoise, mongoose, porcupine, duiker, possibly even Cape grysbok, share this area.
Amid the wild sub-alpine grasses in Hogsback, I had grown accustomed to the close company of birds, bees, beetles, skinks and shongololos; it made sense to create similar meadow conditions now, once more inviting the small creatures near. Wild life keeps me sane.
To begin with, we let the wild grasses and bushes completely take over - you could say that we deliberately neglected the ground. Small felicias appeared in spring and clovers blossomed merrily. Then, between them, we planted an array of lavender bushes and butterfly-bush (gaura) from a nursery. We left all the weeds and scraggly grasses to continue to do their bit between the molerat hills, trusting that over time, a natural balance would even things out.
Our neighbours on one side, who are only seldom in their house, employ a garden company, which regularly, noisily razes their sun-scorched 'lawn' further down to sand, no matter the white-flowering succulents that try, despite everything, to survive in the barren ground. Recently we noticed candelabra flowers (brunsvigia) popping speary red shoots out on their property. Luckily, the neighbours came for a visit just then and we could get their very glad permission to move these glamorous plants, before they be decapitated by the machine-minded company.
No sooner had the candelabra flowers been transplanted than three greater double-collared sunbirds - two females and a male - came to feast on the nectar. They were completely unafraid of our proximity, showing us that our dream is perfectly tangible.
Our dune stands out in the suburb by looking 'untidy', 'wild', 'neglected', even. Yet no: it is cared for and loved, for being at one with the dry season coming, now, to its natural end. Nor is the space unnecessarily howled upon by that terrible suburban neurosis, the leaf blower.
We hope that our tiny farmland-type garden might, over time, set a trend. Reeling your dreams in, bringing them home to where you actually stand and walk, gives simple happiness a chance.
