About Blooming Time! The Cape’s Flowers

Home to 10% of the world’s flowering plant species, South Africa sends its luxuriant flora into to a dazzling climax in the Western Cape. It’s easy to get a taste of the floral display – and the animals associated with it – at popular places like Table Mountain and Cape Point but for those who want more colour, more wildlife (and fewer crowds) then two destinations stand out above all the others.

One is the West Coast National Park – a short drive north from Cape Town on the Atlantic shoreline; the other is the Cederberg Mountain range, further north and inland. They are worth combining on an itinerary because it is not just their geographical character that differentiates them. The sands of the West Coast throw up a display of flowers that rival any desert bloom while the Cederberg offers a complete immersion into the Cape’s famous fynbos biome, a seemingly modest heathland that nevertheless delivers the most diverse collection of flora anywhere on earth.

It’s easy to add on to a Cape Town holiday: logistics are simple, accommodation very good and the standard of guiding, not to say the food and wine, is excellent. The big thing is WHEN. What time of year is best for this?

Let’s start with the fynbos – the vegetation that covers the mountains in the Cape. You can appreciate its beauty and diversity in any month because it is an evergreen system and there is always at least a fifth of the plants in flower at any time of year. If you could choose a month for fynbos at its best, then August to November would deliver the greatest flower show; almost two thirds of the species are in bloom.

But it is a bit different on the West Coast. There are things to see all year round – birds, animals, flowers – but if you are after the kind of flower displays that bring a stunned silence to observers, then it is only August and September. In these months, Postberg, a private reserve set within the national park, opens its usually locked gate to visitors who are met by millions of colourful annuals plus orchids, hyacinths and amaryllis, all propelled out of the ground by mild weather and rain.

RAIN. That brings us to the next thing. Although most of the Cape’s rain has already fallen in June and July, the prime flower months of August and September are still in the Cape’s rainy winter season (although it is bone-dry in South Africa’s safari destinations like the Kruger Park). There is a chance of rain in flower season, even into November, but the days in between rain, of which there are many, are sunny and dry.

How to do it? The West Coast National Park works nicely as a day trip from Cape Town. You can self-drive in a hire car – it’s simple enough to get there – but you’ll get far more from the experience if you hire a guide and let them do the driving and explaining. Go with a specialist nature guide and now you’ll really know what you are looking at – bring binoculars too; the reserve has a great bird list plus wildlife and, in August and September, whales.

The Cederberg can be accessed via the West Coast National Park or Cape Town but either way it’s a much bigger area to explore; you’ll need at least three nights to get the most out of it. There’s not much accommodation in the Cederberg Mountains, certainly of a standard up to safari lodges, but what there is, is excellent. Tucked away in private settings, Cederberg accommodation offers guests the chance to experience the mountains, sampling not just the tastes and smells of the fynbos but also those of fine food and scented baths. You’ll walk with guides, sit back on wildlife drives and gaze at the stars that strew themselves across the night sky.

Both destinations are ideal for nature-lovers and gardeners, scientists, birders and just about anyone who is interested in unique natural places; the scenery, the flora, the animals, the human history – it is all very localised and fascinating in both depth and detail. If you’ve ever wondered why everyone goes on about South Africa’s plants, then these two destinations deliver the answer why.