Located in Cape Town, South Africa, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is one of the most famous in the world for its diversity, the richness of its flora -it only has native plants- and its exceptional situation. These lands were bequeathed by an Englishman, Cecil Rhodes, when he died in 1902, to the English Crown.
Opened in 1913, this botanical garden extends over 528 hectares of which 478 are located at the foot of the mountain, while the remaining 36 hectares have been transformed into a beautiful garden with over 7,000 varieties of plants.
In addition to the botanical garden, this space has a uncultivated area of great interest with several trails that go into a primary forest where you can see cycas and yellowoods, typical of the region. Leaving the building where the offices of the park are there is one of these paths reaches the Skeleton Gorge, one of the most popular itineraries that brings us close to one of the edges in the mountain. To the north we can come to Rhodes’ Memorial along the Devil’s peak. To the south we find the itinerary to Constantia Nek.
To celebrate the first 100 years of life of this garden, those responsible for it ordered two years ago to build the Tree Canopy walkway so the tourists who would come to visit it could cross it.
The peculiarity of this walkway is that it is floating, and meanders above the trees. It is a bridge made of iron and wood of 130 meters long and 12 meters above the ground, which runs sinuously the treetops of a part of the Table Mountain National Park.
Through this walkway, visitors can admire the vegetation at bird’s eye view. The best time to visit it is from late August to late October, coinciding with the beginning of the austral summer.
Photos: David Stanley, Daniela Ruppel, Michael Morris and Tony Carr.
