Go Green!
This is not a political rallying call. It’s a celebration of green — especially as it comes to us in the form of vegetation.
I’ve just spent time along the Garden Route in South Africa and it is aptly named. The hills are overgrown with indigenous forests draped in vines. Lakes and ponds are fringed with ferns and covered with floating lilies. Purple, white, yellow wild flowers peak through layers of lush shrubs and grasses.
We took a trail walk through the Wilderness National Park and stepped over knotted roots, pontooned across the river and picnicked on a huge granite rock below a gushing waterfall. Surrounded by green of all textures and shades dappled by the sun I felt myself unwinding. The effect of this beauty was refreshing, calming and inspiring.
Maybe I was feeling this especially because I was coming straight from a dry and brittle Johannesburg desperate for rain. Maybe because my mind had been hyper engaged on a project and here I could somehow breathe. But I think the reality is green spaces are necessary for the human spirit. Somehow there is an earthy, natural part of us that instinctively feels calmer and yet also energized by being immersed in nature.
This experience was made even more significant on returning to the tree-studded and park-dotted but nevertheless intensely urban, crowded and mostly concrete city of Johannesburg. But most of us are more likely to live in the “Joburgs” of the world than the “Garden Routes”. For the first time in human history more people live in urban areas than in rural. It is estimated that within 20 years every second person in Africa will live in a town or city. This on a continent traditionally understood to be rural.
We are becoming city dwellers. There’s nothing wrong with that. Cities are vibrant, energetic, innovative places. I for one, love Johannesburg with its pulsating drive and eclectic mix of cultural, business and social endeavours. And Johannesburg has long been touted as the largest human made forest in the world.
But where do we get our greens? The green that feeds our soul? The fresh, garden grown greens that feed our bodies? It’s there in the city but you have to look for it and you have to protect it.
My sister living in Port Elizabeth has just started a wonderful venture. She grows vegetables from seedlings to strong healthy plants and then sells them to people who either want an instant veggie garden or have never planted or nurtured a garden before but want to give it a try. She told me her absolute delight when people message her that they are so thrilled because they have just made a salad with ingredients from their own garden.
Full confession — I am not a gardener. I don’t dig in the soil, push down little seeds with my hands and diligently water them to see them sprout and grow. But I love eating gently steamed spinach straight from the garden or tomatoes with fresh basil. So maybe I want my greens and eat them too but I hope that as “citified” as we become that we will not lose our connection to the soil.
I hope too that we will create and care for what is green. Our bodies and souls need it.

