INSPIRATION: This beautiful flower blooms for a short time in late summer, it’s an interesting plant, a woody iridaceae, and although they are rare elsewhere there is one spot where they are locally abundant, called nivenia nirvana by one botanist. They come in a variety of glorious blues.
Copyright Vicki Thomas 2016
INSPIRATION: The rare Marsh Rose, with its shy flower is almost transparent and shiny, but with a dense covering of hairs. It is remarkable and has a strange scent of toast. It is in the protea family and is one of our ultimate family favourites, our daughter was proposed to with this bloom.
Copyright Vicki Thomas 2016
INSPIRATION: This pink beauty was grown by bulb specialist, Graham Duncan, and lent to me when it was in full glorious bloom. I am so lucky to have botanists who assist me.
Copyright Vicki Thomas
INSPIRATION: Green Onions was a song I grew up with and this one (although it is not an onion at all) grows on the banks of the Crocodile River and was brought back to Kirstenbosch to be grown by Ernst van Jaarsveld, one of our most famous plant collectors.
Copyright: Vicki Thomas 2016
INSPIRATION: Queen of the Crane Flowers, with its striking bird like colours is an iconic South African plant. The Zulus have a story that a bird was turned into a flower because it ate the crops, and now it looks to the skies and cries for its lack of flight.
Copyright Vicki Thomas 2016
INSPIRATION: Every magnificent tree my dad saw he called a wild fig. This one really is one though, and its clusters of figs are just astonishing in their colour variety. This image was used for the Kirstenbosch Biennale.
Copyright: Vicki Thomas 2016