Natural sculptures

There is, we think, no garden that stimulates associative minds as much as a succulent garden. The ’strange’ shapes of succulents inspired Afrikaners to give names to plants which sometimes sound rude (but they don’t mean it that way, it’s just a way of expressing themselves) such as ‘Ou Meid se Boude’ (old woman’s buttock), ‘hondeballen’ (dog balls), ‘katteballetjies’ (cat balls) ‘perdetande’ (horse teeth) and ‘baba boudjies’ (baby buttocks). Afrikaners are very associative people (most of our South African visitors are Afrikaner). They appreciate the natural sculptures and they are also the ones who associate plant shapes with more commomly known shapes. But ‘abstract (land) art’ is something they are troubled with (for them it’s not natural) but the earth sculpture ‘Mama Africa’ (see first contribution of this blog) they really love. Unless there is a story with it they don’t see the clue. We are generalising a bit now and of course there are many exceptions the other way around; English speaking South Africans who never had something to do with plant life suddenly starting to photograph plants and plant details for the simple reason that there is some association.

There are almost 2500 different ‘natural succulent sculptures’ in our garden. Many of them stimulate the human imagination. Not is single one is the same.

There are many shapes; even that of the human brain (also worthwhile are the brains of Klaas Voogds) but these are for people to discover themselves one day.