Meet our 2024 Friends of Garden Day
Garden Day is the perfect time for South Africans to put away their tools and celebrate their gardens and green spaces, for the mental and physical benefits they give us all year long. Each year, we invite different Friends of Garden Day to come on board to celebrate the day in their own special way and to encourage others to do the same.
We’re excited to introduce this year’s Friends, who will be donning their flower crowns and helping to kick off the celebration on Sunday 20 October!
Dr Anesu Mbizvo
Photo: Adel Ferreira
Dr. Anesu Mbizvo, the founder of Johannesburg's first Black and female-run yoga studio, The Nest Space, is a celebrated award-winner and one of the Mail & Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans.
Growing up in Zimbabwe before moving to South Africa in her early teens, Anesu’s journey with nature and plants started at a young age. “All my fondest childhood memories are about finding freedom in the outdoors,” she says. “I could go barefoot, get dirty and it felt like nature would hold me.”
As a child, family gatherings at her grandmother’s home would end in receiving a plant cutting from her grandmother’s garden as a keepsake of the occasion. This ritual was the beginning of learning plant names and how to grow and position these cuttings in the garden. “It felt like we’d leave carrying a little piece of my gran’s garden as well as a little piece of my gran home with us,” she reminisces.
“Garden Day is a reminder that it’s a privilege to have a garden or a little pocket of nature to yourself,” says Anesu, who is looking forward to setting a harvest table in the garden and inviting her gran for a long, lazy lunch outdoors. “I’m hoping to give her cuttings from my garden this time,” she laughs.
Pietman Diener
Photo: Adel Ferreira
Meeting Pietman Diener is to discover a new language – he speaks in flowers, plants and abundant gardens. Pietman works as head gardener on Rustenberg Wine Estate in Stellenbosch in the Cape Winelands, and loves creating spaces in which one is drawn to linger: trees heavy with climbing roses, gentle lawns wrapped in wide flower beds, old-world perennials and softly swaying grasses.
Exposed to the outdoors from a young age, Pietman’s nature-loving parents and grandparents were avid gardeners. “For as long as I can remember, gardens and plants have been a part of my life,” he says. He can’t bring himself to play favourites, but what he does love are perennials - a group of plants he cherishes “for their ability to go from zero to hero season after season.”
Pietman intends to celebrate Garden Day in his garden at home with the special people in his life. “Garden Day is an extension of my love of gardening and life is too short not to do what you love,” he says. “On Garden Day we will eat from the garden!” After a bumper quince crop, that includes syrupy homemade preserves as well as a fresh garden salad, asparagus, beans… and flowers.
Ncumisa Mkabile
Photo: Olivia Kensley
In the heart of Khayelitsha in the Western Cape, Ncumisa Mkabile, UNICEF Ambassador, winner of Best Young Entrepreneur 2023 and the recent recipient of the Ubuntu Award for Youth Diplomacy, is changing the narrative of agricultural entrepreneurship.
Faced with the closure of her events catering business due to the 2020 pandemic, Ncumisa pivoted to agriculture with a determination to make a difference. With no formal training in farming and limited resources, she started growing spinach in her backyard to provide the community with good-quality greens. “I chose to grow spinach because it’s easy to maintain and can survive almost any weather.”
When her backyard could no longer meet the demand, she approached the owner of a one-hectare disused allotment, proposing to lease the land and transform it into a vegetable farm. “It was a big step,” she says, “but I’ve always been a risk taker.” Her bold move marked the beginning of Dawana Fresh Produce, and today she supplies retailers, restaurants and vendors across the Western Cape with fresh produce.
Ncumisa is passionate about empowering women in agriculture and challenging male-dominated industry norms. She believes in the potential of women to drive change and contribute to food security, employment and economic growth. This Garden Day, Ncumisa plans to host a community tea party on her farm, showing her commitment to nurturing growth, both in crops and communities.
Codi Marais
Photo: Adel Ferreira
Upliftment agent, urban farmer and founder of Grow a Garden (Groa), Codi Marais, attributes his sustainable mindset to his grandmother. Groa is an organisation centred around nourishing people and communities by promoting sustainable and regenerative living. Its focus is to provide practical planting skills and education with the ultimate aim of promoting food security in vulnerable communities. They also have a permaculture-based urban farming venture that supplies microgreens to the Cape’s local restaurant industry.
After five years of working on cruise ships, Codi was yearning for terra firma. He longed for the sights and smells of home and being surrounded by the biodiversity and plant life of the Cape. “Whenever we docked in a port, no matter where we were in the world, I’d head straight for a local park or botanical garden to get my plant fix,” he says.
When Codi’s grandmother passed away he returned home to South Africa. Memories of childhood visits to his grandmother’s house in the Overberg region of South Africa came flooding back, bringing with them the recognition that it was his grandmother who had instilled in him the deep-rooted connection to the natural world he had carried with him while working abroad. “These memories ignited something in me when I returned home to South Africa and the seeds for what is now Groa were sown,” says Codi.
Codi celebrates Garden Day by continuing his grandmother's legacy, grateful for the botanically diverse country in which we live. He will engage in a community outreach within Cape communities, driven by a vision to provide education and skills to the vulnerable.
Corli Leonard
Photo: Adel Ferreira
When asked about the genesis of the floral design venture Veldmeisie, the industrial engineer turned floral designer Corli Leonard simply says: “It was flowers that found me.”
After being retrenched for the second time in her life, Corli returned to her family farm in Heidelberg, Gauteng to find her feet and reassess. With a fully booked wedding venue on the farm, she began assisting with floral arrangements for the weddings and was immediately captivated. “It was a difficult period in my life but looking back now, it was exactly the push I needed.”
The name ‘Veldmeisie’ was a natural fit, speaking to the farmgirl who grew up playing and walking for hours outdoors in the open veld. “I’ve always loved a touch of the wild and now I translate this into my work,” she says. With the benefit of a farm for foraging local grasses, wildflowers and seedheads, Corli’s designs exude authenticity and ethereal beauty, evoking the essence of the veld. “It’s important to me that my designs are unique and I love working with material that isn’t readily available in the shops.”
For Corli, Garden Day is about gratitude and allowing oneself the time to enjoy the garden and being outdoors. She is celebrating with florists and designers, once colleagues and now close friends. “We’re making floral crowns with a multitude of different plants, fruits, flowers and vegetables. A reminder to use what we have around us - and don’t forget to play!”
Celebrate with us!
Celebrate Garden Day with us on Sunday 20 October! For food, decor and party ideas and inspiration, visit our blog and check out our social media. Want to join an event, enter a competition or bag a promo? Visit our Events page.
Share your celebration with us @gardendaysa and tag #GardenDaySA.