Writings about the garden
Location: Cape Town, South Africa • • • Visit: December 1997
The first botanic garden I photographed was Kirstenbosch in Cape Town. I was nine, and as with most trips I went on with my dad growing up, he wrote an article about it, centered around traveling with children. This was the first time he included my own words in the article, in a short, journal-like format. In a sense, this was my debut at a writer. About the day we went to Kirstenbosch, I wrote:
December 21st, 1997: Today we went to the market in Muizenberg. There I bought a pair of sandals. Then we went to a botanical garden. We walked around for two hours and looked at Protea.
One could say that this is where it all started: My travel writing, plant photography, and love for botanic gardens. My weakness for winding descriptions hadn’t been awakened yet, evidently, but I remember strolling around in the lush greenery together with my grandmother Lilian. She loved the protea flowers. She had a weakness for the slightly odd, but beautiful.
She also took me for my first visit to Bergius botanic garden in Stockholm. I remember looking at the cacti in the greenhouse and sitting in the café. She took me to all the sights of Stockholm, on school holidays when my parents were working. I remember wandering through town, her pointing out her favorite buildings to me. She loved architecture, would have become an architect if she had been young at a time when it was more common for women to get a higher education. Instead, she became a librarian. Most of the books I had as a child were from her.
At the time, I didn’t get it. I thought looking at old buildings was kind of boring. But with time, I’ve come to appreciate the timelessness of good architecture, the longevity of something that is both functional, well crafted and beautiful. Architecture can, like few other artforms, connect us with a deeper sense of time in the midst of our everyday lives. Like rocks and trees, they stand, reminding us to be still, remember times, lives past.
Lilian. She took me to my first botanic gardens. She had an eye for the colorful and oddly beautiful, an appreciation for the timeless. I will always love her for passing it on to me.
Photo: Lilian with protea in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, South Africa, December 1997. Captured by me with my very first analogue compact camera.
Katja Malmborg 