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| August and September are the spring months. There is nearly always a haze dimming the furthest horizons, but it is part of the spring feeling, the anticipation of the first rains of spring, when the air will become clean and clear again. Everywhere in the Garden there are signs of renewal and exciting plants start pushing up through the soil. In the picture, the snow-white blossoms of the wild pear, Dombeya rotundifolia, herald the advent of the new season as is alluded to in the siSwathi name for the tree, umBikanyaka. | |
| This Garden is noted for its wonderful, massed displays of Clivia miniata, which never fail to delight visitors. | |
| The startlingly scarlet show of the Flame Creeper, Combretum microphyllum, at the guest cottage and the Cascades Café, is a blatant invitation to photographers to record the spectacle. | |
| The Lowveld Chestnut, Sterculia murex, grows only in a few areas in south-eastern Mpumalanga, Swaziland and northern KwaZulu/Natal. It regularly bears, in great abundance, dark yellow, star-shaped blooms | |
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The well-known Sausage Tree, Kigelia africana, a member of the Bignonia family, has large, wine-red, trumpet-shaped flowers that are full of nectar that attract birds and bees from dawn to dusk. The polony-shaped fruits are not of the delicatessen variety and are eaten only by baboons! While still green, the fruit is sliced and applied to skin abrasions and, reputedly, also to skin cancers. Mean daily temperatures in spring are 11ºC (nights) to 26ºC (days). Monthly rainfall is 22mm on average. |
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