Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is reputed to be the most beautiful garden in the world. Situated on the eastern slopes of Cape Town's Table Mountain, covering more than 1,300 acres, and home to over 7,000 species of South African plants, the Garden's grandeur is hard to overstate.
I think of some of the other beautiful gardens we have visited--Buchart Gardens in British Columbia, the Los Angeles Botanical Gardens, the gardens at Versailles, the Huntington Library Garden in Pasadena--and I have to say that Kirstenbosch is my favorite.
But first, Nelson Mandela.
I had done a bunch of Mandela-related reading before this trip, and from the time I set foot on South Africa soil, I was on the lookout for references to this great man. Kirstenbosch did not disappoint.
Just inside the Visitor's Center entrance to the Garden I found a bust of my hero on a pedestal next to a pepper-bark tree that he planted on a visit to the Garden in August 1996.
