Rene Pelston’s neighbours thought she was crazy because she spent large parts of her day crawling around in the dirt outside her house.
Pelston was in fact trying to clean up the rubble and litter-strewn patch of road reserve in front of her Morgen’s Village home.
“We moved here in 2005,” Pelston said. “This was an open space full of garbage and litter. There was also a lot of rubble under the top soil from when these houses were built. It was just dumped here. I thought, ‘It’s in front of my house. I don’t want to look out and see that, so I started planting.”
Pelston first cleaned the ground and then planted flowers, herbs and trees from cuttings she scavenged. Through a process of trial and error, Pelston discovered that some animals from the nature reserve, which her house borders, were attracted to certain plants.
“The first year, I planted a lot of vygies,” she said but she stopped once she realised that it attracted moles.
She also cordoned off a section for veggies but that attracted meerkats.
“So we had moles under and meerkats on top,” Pelston said laughing.
Eventually, Pelston decided to stick with herbs, succulents and indigenous trees and the department of parks and recreation put in a water pipe. Now the garden is finally flourishing without pests – at least not of the four-legged kind. Pelston said that she’s had to chase away “druggies” who tried to use the shady areas to get a high.
Her only challenge now is that she can no longer maintain the garden as well as she would like because of her arthritis and she hopes the City and councillors would be able to come on board and keep it running.
A spin off of her efforts was that her neighbours also started gardens in the road reserve in front of their homes. They have asked her for cuttings, Pelston said, but the neighbouring gardens are not yet flourishing as well as hers.
Gardening for food
Another Morgen’s Village resident, Beverley Baron-Chongo, lives on a main road a few roads away from Pelston. She too has a garden growing but hers is more for food than aesthetics.
Baron-Chongo has more than 15 plants growing in a 2m by 3m space in her backyard but she says over the years she has had far more than that.
One of her most prolific plants is chilies and she regularly shares chili jam with her neighbours.
Baron-Chongo’s garden was the fruit of a food gardening programme by the Department of Agriculture several years ago. The programme trained 20 people in sustainable food gardening and provided starter packs which included worm bins and seeds.
Since then Baron-Chongo has spread her gardening bug to her neighbours via cuttings, seeds and produce.
“This is my happy place,” Baron-Chongo said, adding that the sliding door from her bedroom has a view of the garden and every morning she spends some time in the space praying.
Gardening is infectious, the Morgen’s Village residents have found and they are appealing to the City to help them make the garden’s sustainable.
city to assist
Councillor Francine Higham, Mayco member for community services and health, said the City supports community groups that have a formal partnership agreement with them.
“The City commends residents and community groups who roll up their sleeves to help keep Cape Town’s parks and open spaces looking their best,” she said. “To support community efforts, the recreation and parks department can provide certain items, such as plants, garden tools, hose pipes, paint and brushes, to individuals or community groups that have a formal partnership agreement with us. This helps with the maintenance and improvement of public parks and open spaces.
“If residents would like to start a Friends group for their local park, they are invited to complete an application and submit it to RP.Enquiries@capetown.gov.za.
“The City also collaborates with ratepayers associations, CIDs and Friends groups on beautification projects across the metropole. For planting guidance, the department offers water-wise plant lists that residents can use when purchasing from nearby nurseries. If groups are interested in planting a tree on public property, we encourage them to use the Tree Planting Application Form.”
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