The Battle for Betty’s Bay
We returned to the Harold Porter Gardens to continue the work done last month. We have been asked by the Estate Manager, Wonga Kominisi, not only to remove the dead material but to clear some of the areas infested by Keubooms. We completed the removal of the dead material in the main easterly bed and we left a large number of piles of our pickings as usual. We found that we were opening up the patches considerably and this went down very well with Wonga.
We finished this part of the project by break time, so after the break we went across to the far bank of the Davidskraal River to remove all the existing live Keurbooms overtaking the area.
The staff had started this project, and we were asked to continue it. Most of the trees were comparatively small, but still most required chainsaws. There were a few growing down below the main garden level in the banks of the river, and these required a lot of scrambling down and climbing back up afterwards. Nothing daunted some of our team who successfully undertook this task
As ever we made our trademark piles of debris and cleared areas. The staff of HP chip the material collected and use it as mulch. Incidentally, when I was in the Gardens on the following Tuesday as a member of our “Friends of HPG” project I saw the staff taking some of the stacks away and they were, once again, effusive in their thanks and appreciation.
Many thanks to all of our volunteers for the hard, though rewarding, work. Thanks, too, to Paddy & Peter Dall for their hospitality and to Anne Mourant, Mary Whitelaw and Lee Boyd for the refreshments.
As ever, on behalf of the Betty’s Bay Fynbos, and, in this case, the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden, thanks to all the hackers for your efforts.
David Mourant
Convener Betty’s Bay Hack Group