Fiance and I went to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago, and once again Cape Town managed to knock me off my feet with it’s beauty. It sits at the foot of Table Mountain, which is enough for an incredible view right there. This is one of the more famous botanical gardens in the world, in part because only plants indigenous to the area are grown in the garden.

The garden is GIGANTIC and took us about three hours to explore entirely. There are so many beautiful little exhibits within it and so much variety. We really wanted to take our time at each spot, learning as much as we could about the group of plants being displayed.

This post is mostly photos, and a lot of them, because I think the beauty of the garden speaks for itself.

The sculpture below was at the entrance to the gardens and I adored it.

I was kind of obsessed with the orange flowers below. They were so striking and almost velvety looking. Hence a lot of pictures of them.

There were several little ponds throughout the gardens and lots of duck-looking birds near them.

This is the view of the city from the gardens.

Plenty of excellent resting benches were sprinkled throughout.

These palm tree looking trees are called cycads.

The palm tree below is one of the last of its kind- it’s critically endangered. It’s called an Albany Cycad. The seedlings from this group have been sold to gardeners and planted in the wild to help keep the species alive.

This was the entrance to a gorgeous little bird bath.

There were peacocks everywhere! And they had no fear of all the people roaming about.

Oh, and turtles, lots of turtles! I apparently have excellent turtle spotting skills, just ask Fiance.

The Garden of Extinction at the end of the trail was really cool. It was made up of plants considered extinct or near extinction and had little red signs with inspirational quotes like the one at the beginning of this post.

We stopped in the shop at the end and bought some King Protea seeds for our moms for Mother’s Day. They are South Africa’s national flower and the country’s cricket team is named for them. Unfortunately the protea garden was not in bloom while we were there. I also found these bizarre brain looking plants and I totally would have bought one if I had a more permanent garden for it.