When it comes to indigenous gardening, few people have shaped South Africa’s understanding quite like botanist Ernst van Jaarsveld. With the release of the new, expanded edition of Waterwise Gardening in South Africa and Namibia, IGNA SCHNEIDER sits down with Ernst to talk veld, succulents and the joy of watching life take root.
This is the third edition of Waterwise Gardening in South Africa and Namibia. It’s fresh, new – and weighs 2.5kg! Why was it important to revisit and expand the book? It was long overdue – the first edition appeared 25 years ago. Knowledge and plant names are always evolving, so it was time for a fully updated version.
Ten years ago, when I retired from Kirstenbosch, Koos Bekker, owner of Babylonstoren, invited me to join their team, and I’m very thankful for his support. This new edition, published by Babylonstoren, is much thicker – with updated plant names, street trees for each region, and the most wonderful botanical illustrations. I’ve also added practical gardening tips and expanded sections on beneficial wildlife and pest control.
This book really is my life’s work. I’ve written many, but this one gave me the most joy. It’s the one I most wanted to publish as it represents a new garden philosophy: working with nature, not against it.
How would you like to see people use it? My philosophy is simple: Choose the most resilient local indigenous species for each biome and they’ll take care of themselves. Then, when planting and restoring a garden, follow nature’s pattern: start with the fast-growing pioneers and end with the long-lived perennials. That’s true ecological gardening. The book helps people choose wisely and bring a piece of the veld into their own homes. South Africa has nine plant regions: check the biome map to see where your garden falls, then head to the relevant chapter. It tells you exactly which plants thrive locally. I’ve chosen the best for each region, from fynbos and thicket to succulent Karoo, following nature’s lead.
In the wild, it’s the fast-growing pioneer plants that appear first after disturbances such as veld fires. So start your garden with these pioneers, then fill in with other species.
The book’s tables guide you on the best starting points, architectural plants and trees. Decades of experience at Kirstenbosch, Babylonstoren, and in the field have gone into these choices.
Afrikaans plant names spark joy: skilpadsam breeltjie, skoenveterbossie, skotteloortjie … Why was it important for you to include these common names alongside the scientific and English names? The Afrikaans names are part of our cultural history. Verneukhalfmensie, Kaokowolftoon …
They developed in everyday speech and are often very descriptive. Take, for example, the kanniedood – it literally means ‘the plant cannot die’! The folk names are also specific to certain regions, reflecting local culture and knowledge.
The reptile folk names are lovely too. One of my favourites is blafgeitjie (barking gecko). As dusk falls in the dry parts of South Africa, you can hear it ‘bark’.
The wine honeybells (Freylinia visseri) is one of Ernst’s favourite botanical illustrations in the book. He nursed this strandveld shrub back to life after it nearly vanished from the wild.
The book is filled with stunning photographs and illustrations. Do you have a favourite that captures the spirit of indigenous gardening? One of my favourites is the botanical illus- tration of the honeybells or suurlat (Freylinia visseri), a Strandveld shrub that came close to vanishing from the wild. In the eighties, I stumbled upon a dried, unnamed specimen in the Compton Herbarium – a real find for a plant sleuth. Some detective work led me to Grootklipfontein near Aurora, where I met oom Floors Visser. He showed me the last two remaining plants which he had saved from a region where it was ploughed up.
I took cuttings, nursed them back to life and had them painted by Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst. I then named it after Floors Visser, who saved it from extinction! Today, the plant is flourishing, its lilac tubular flowers lighting up Strandveld and fynbos gardens. A beautiful example of ex situ conservation.
I also love the photo of the young Fynbos Garden at Babylonstoren, which I started a decade ago with fast-growing pioneer plants, exactly as I recommend for anyone starting a garden. The Babylonstoren garden has since matured beautifully.
You often say a healthy garden hums with life. Can you share an example of how planting indigenous species brings wildlife back? When we planted the rock garden at Babylonstoren, I started with colourful pioneer plants that attract insects. Soon indigenous predators arrived. The first lizard to move in was the striking three-striped Cape skink. Blue-headed southern rock agamas and girdle-tailed lizards adapted beautifully, feasting on pests like grasshoppers and moths.
We didn’t have chameleons until we planted restios, and now we have plenty of local angulate tortoises (Chersina angulata) munching on succulents. When you plant indigenous, the local critters follow. Just look at the aloes with their beautiful inflorescences bearing tubular flowers. They attract sunbirds that perch on their sturdy scapes.
Your own garden in Die Boord, Stellenbosch, is teeming with life. Tell us about that. The previous owner, a Kalahari native, had planted a little oasis of palms and tree ferns. The first thing I did was switch off the irrigation. I’m slowly transforming it into an indigenous garden with local wild olive trees. Next, we’ll replace the lawn with gravel and hardy groundcovers that can handle the heat.
It took me eight years to convince my wife to turn our chlorine pool into an eco-friendly one. After planting eelgrass, marginal aquatics and local water lilies, the water turned crystal clear. The finches noticed right away and started nesting in the tree above, which chlorine would have made impossible.
Now the evenings bring a chorus of frogs. I even raise young Cape terrapins (turtles) from Babylonstoren in the pool until they’re strong enough to go back. Every afternoon at four, their little heads pop up for a snack of mince or snails – they’ve become quite greedy! The water is so clean you could drink it. And I can still swim in it.
If you were to do a spot of guerrilla gardening in Stellenbosch, which street trees would you plant? Personally, I would want to turn the ‘Eikestad’ into ‘Olienhoutstad’. The oak is from Europe and doesn’t thrive here. The trunks hollow out and keeping the trees healthy is difficult. They get aphid infestations and then the sticky sap drips onto cars, so they have to be sprayed every year. Fortunately, the municipality started planting indigenous species, which is encouraging. I’d like to plant more Breede River yellow-wood (Podocarpus elongatus), Cape chestnut (Calodendrum capense) and the coral tree with its brilliant red flowers. The forest elder (Nuxia floribunda) is lovely too, bursting with white blooms in winter.
You’ve studied succulents for decades. What makes them so special to you? Succulents have been my passion since childhood. They range from tiny baby’s toes a few millimetres tall to the great baobab, and South Africa has the richest succulent diversity in the world. These plants are self-sufficient survivors shaped by hardship – drought, grazing and time – and they’ve become beautiful architectural forms that have endured for thousands of years.
Aloes and other succulents give nectar to sunbirds and bees, and shelter to lizards. Their sheer diversity, spread across some 45 plant families, makes succulents endlessly fascinating.
Some also make perfect house plants, ideal for small spaces. Dwarf succulents are sociable when grouped together, and cuttings are easy to share with neighbours. My advice? Give plants away freely; we’re all working towards something larger.
Mimicry, water storage, camouflage … Which survival strategy fascinates you most? I’m most taken with what I call “passive resistance” – plants that don’t fight back with thorns or toxins but simply endure and regrow. Take spekboom (Portulacaria afra), cotyledon or crassula; when grazed or trampled, their broken bits root and start new plants, turning damage into growth. That lesson from nature stays with me: don’t lie down under pressure, grow from it.
For my PhD I studied cliff plants: the cliff- huggers, cliff-hangers and cliff-squatters. The rock is their shelter, so they need no spines or poisons. Watching those patterns – how some cling, dangle or press flat between rocks – was endlessly revealing. Nature always finds a way.
At Babylonstoren you’ve helped create living plant museums, from the Succulent House to the arboretum and rockeries. Which of these projects felt most rewarding? The Welwitschia Garden is very close to my heart. During Covid, the owner of Babylonstoren asked me to build a large succulent garden between the vegetable garden and the greenhouse.
I asked if I could create a welwitschia garden there. It’s the only true evergreen plant in the world. It never sheds its leaves, just keeps growing two long ribbons like a slow conveyor belt and can live for up to 2 500 years. Flies pollinate it and its winged seeds scatter on the wind. The wonder of the Namib, the two-leaved kanniedood is found only from Swakopmund to southern Angola. A minimalist plant that carries no baggage. Even when grazed, it grows back, still the same two leaves.
I also loved the Babylonstoren rooftop garden with quiver trees. It’s a miniature South Africa in three layers: succulent Karoo on top, thicket vegetation on the side, and fynbos across the rest. Rugged, layered, alive.
What first sparked your love for indigenous plants? My earliest memories are from my grandmother’s apartment in Blairgowrie, Johannesburg. I’d help her transplant wandering Jews and hen-and-chickens, and watch them survive, regrow and thrive. It was magical.
Holidays on my grandfather’s farms near Heidelberg deepened my fascination. He gave me books on aloes and one called Trees and Shrubs of the Witwatersrand, and I learnt the plants’ names before I knew much schoolwork. I was always outside, climbing trees, exploring the veld – that’s where I really learnt.
In high school, seeing people replace our rich local flora with European and Australian plants upset me. That’s when I decided to make it my life’s work to teach people to plant indigenous species.
South Africa has the world’s richest plant diversity, from the Cape Floristic Region in the south to the summer rainfall savanna in the north, with deserts and tropical coasts in between. We are incredibly lucky to have so much to choose from, and it’s ours to cherish.
After all these years, is there something in nature that still stops you in your tracks? There’s a vine in the Bushveld called Aaron’s staff (Tinospora fragosa). It starts life as a climbing plant but because it’s an edible succulent, elephants eat it off the trees. Sometimes the poor plant hangs 10m above the ground, severed from the soil. And yet, instead of dying, it grows a survival root. A lifeline. That root grows 3cm–4cm a day until it finally reaches the earth.
I’m amazed every time I see it. From a broken stump comes a tiny root, refusing to give up. Once it reaches the ground, the vine grows again, stores water in its stem, and even if animals eat it off again, it just grows another root. Soon heart-shaped leaves appear and red berries form to be spread by birds. It’s a plant with immense resilience, a lesson for us all. Never give up, no matter how badly life bites.
If you could leave one message for future gardeners and botanists, what would it be? If a plant won’t grow, try again. You learn through mistakes. Don’t believe you don’t have green fingers. Start with a spekboom or a crassula. Watch it grow and develop, and your confidence will grow too.
Plants are like people – they want to live. Sometimes I find a tiny leaf on my windowsill and feel sorry for it. I put it in water, and when I see it start to swell and grow, it’s pure joy. It never gives up. It just starts again, becoming a whole new plant.
More Information
The new Waterwise Gardening in South Africa and Namibia is available from Babylonstoren’s online shop and the farm shop at R790. It is published by Tip Africa Publishing (publishers of Stellenbosch Visio) on behalf of Babylonstoren.