Spring Day in Namaqualand

with my sister near Grasse

We had been to Holland's Keukenhof Gardens, a 77 acre garden known world-wide as the "Greatest Flower Show on Earth" and we also visited the Floriade in Holland twice. Once outside Amsterdam while touring through the Netherlands on a year which coincided with their single exhibition every 10 years and a second time in Zoetermeer when Vince had an apartment in nearby Utrecht. 

Hidcote Manor

We've been to Monet's painterly gardens at Giverny in France for our May birthdays during peak bloom and we've been to Provence several times in the summer and experienced the acres and acres of fragrant lavender clumps growing across the endless fields. White gardens in Kent. Garden rooms in Gloucestershire. Walled gardens in Cornwall. We've even enjoyed moments of zen in the gardens of Kyoto, Japan.

 









But those are all cultivated, planned and manicured. Namaqualand in peak bloom is a whole other thing. It is wild!

The Namaqualand National Park welcome center had a display identifying all the plants in bloom. Not unlike the jacaranda trees in Gauteng and the cherry trees in Washington, DC, exactly when the plants bloom and for how long depends on a number of factors - the weather, the amount of rainfall and probably a little voodoo.

peak season

We had hit it at peak bloom - the week of Spring Day, Sept 1. Next week, the park ranger told us, the blooms will be completely spent! That would have been a crying shame.