Deep inside the heart of every city in South Africa, is a national garden. From the abundant and beautiful flowers that paint the paths to the squirrels and birds that call it all home. School children come to study its habitat while strangers, fall in love.

We take a look at some of the well-known and hidden floral gems...

• The Company’s Garden, Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
The garden offers features such as ponds, an aviary, a sundial, and the historic Victorian restrooms. It was designed by the city’s founding father Jan van Riebeeck on order of the Dutch-East India Trading Company. In the Company gardens there are a number of historically important sites and museums. They include the National Library, The South African National Gallery, The South African Museum, The Centre for the Book, St Georges Cathedral and the South African Cultural Museum.

• Soekershof Gardens, Klaas Voogds West, Robertson
Soekershof means Seekers Court. Not quite a conventional garden but instead a maze of greenery Uncover the mystery in the company of people who want to provide you with an enjoyable and inspirational experience.

Let the greenery find you. Explore the Garden Route with our packages.

• The Rose Garden, Durban Road, Durbanville
This 3.5 hectare garden includes 500 varietals and 4 500 rose bushes. You can enjoy the layout of hybrid teas along Drakenstein Street, beds of miniatures, a gazebo that includes the ‘Fairest Cape’ rose, a test garden, beds of medal winners, antique roses planted around graves, floribundas near the parking and climbers and shrubs against the fence.

• Nieuwoudtville Gardens, Northern Cape
It’s South Africa's 9th National Botanical Garden and comprises largely of natural patches of renosterveld fynbos and succulent karoo vegetation. The wonders of this botanical garden is that it will ensure the promotion of the nature-based tourism, the conservation of the area's unique biodiversity, environmental education opportunities and many long term ecological research opportunities in this botanical hotspot.

• Brenthurst Gardens
This garden is rated as one of the finest in South Africa and it’s easy to see why. The natural style of garden is inspired by the wild and the garden is planted as a balanced eco-system where nature becomes the gardening partner, rather than an opponent. The garden is now a haven for wildlife such as mongooses, small rodents, frogs, reptiles, birds including raptors and many insects.

Nature’s botanical gardens

Botanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily to categorize and document it for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and educate the public, upon whom many depend for funding.

• Kirstenbosch, Cape Town
It is world-renowned for the beauty and diversity of the Cape flora it displays. Also its setting is magnificently against the eastern slopes of Table Mountain. Kirstenbosch grows only indigenous South African plants. The estate covers 528 hectares and supports a diverse fynbos flora and natural forest.

• Pretoria
The garden is home to the Head Office of SANBI successfully bridging the divide between scientific research and the recreational environment. A 50 m high quartzite outcrop divides the garden in two sections. The garden contains 50% of the country's tree species and offers the visitor a glimpse of different biomes such as savannah, forest, fynbos and some plants of other biomes.

• KwaZulu-Natal
The beautiful KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Garden specialises in the conservation of plants from the eastern region of South Africa and of rare and endangered species from elsewhere. The focus of the garden is to collect, display and promote the conservation of plants of the eastern grasslands, in particular the genera Kniphofia, Watsonia and Dierama.

• Harold Porter, Overberg
The garden is set between mountain and sea, in the heart of the Cape fynbos region and has 10 hectares of cultivated fynbos garden and 190.5 hectares of pristine natural fynbos. The garden includes mountain slopes with fynbos vegetation, deep gorges with relict forests, flats and marshes with restios, sedges and bulbs, as well as dunes adjacent to the beach with their specialised salt-adapted plants. The main fynbos families (proteas, Ericas and restios) as well as other important families such as irises, daisies and orchids.

• Walter Sisulu, Roodepoort, Gauteng
Walter Sisulu Garden is set against the backdrop of the magnificent Witpoortjie waterfall and was previously called the Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden. Covering almost 300 hectares it consists of both landscaped and natural veld areas. A breeding pair of Black Eagles is nested on the cliffs alongside the waterfall. The JCI Geological Trail gives visitors the opportunity to learn something about the fascinating geology of the area.

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