South Africa Guide
Cape Town
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens
Address: Five kilometres south of Rondebosch, on Rhodes Avenue
Opening time: Daily: April– Aug 8am–6pm; Sept– March 8am–7pm
Telephone: 021 799 8783
Price: R30, children R5
The Kirstenbosch National BotanicalGardens re the third most popular tourist attraction in Cape Town (surpassed only by the Waterfront and the cable-car trip up Table Mountain). Kirstenbosch was the first botanical garden to grow only indigenous plants, established in 1913 to promote, conserve and display the extraordinarily rich and diverse flora of southern Africa. It is internationally acclaimed as one of the world's great botanical gardens. The land was a farm, purchased by Cecil Rhodes in 1895 and left to the nation on his death in 1902. He planted the avenue of camphor and fig trees that is still here. Today, nearly 25,000 indigenous plants – and a herbarium, research unit and library – attract researchers and botanists from all over the world. There's a nursery selling local plants, while characteristic Cape plants, known as fynbos and found nowhere else in the world, are cultivated on the slopes above Kirstenbosch. In 2004 the gardens became South Africa's sixth UNESCO World Heritage site – the first botanical garden in the world to achieve this status, which in this instance recognizes the international significance of the fynbos plant kingdom.