Roger Graham, Friends of the Meadowridge Common chairman
When Garden Cities developed the suburb of Meadowridge in the 1950s, it was sited on what was originally Bergvliet Farm, whose manager in the early 20th century was a Dr William Purcell. As an amateur botanist, he compiled a list of 593 indigenous flora he found there and left this to the South African Museum, of which he was the curator.
The vegetation type which Dr Purcell had collected was Cape Flats Sandplain Fynbos (CFSF), one percent of which is now found growing wild on the peninsula.
In the mid-90s a very rare protea of this veld type, Diastella proteoides, was found there. A group of residents then formed a committee, the Friends of the Meadowridge Common, to conserve the common and keep it free of dumping, squatting and alien vegetation.
The Western Cape is famous for the diversity found within its floral kingdom and CFSF is important in this mix. Aiming to have the area proclaimed a conservation area, the Friends developed a management plan and drew the attention of the City to the value of this public open space. In 2012, the Meadowridge Common was proclaimed a conservation area.
A subsequent study in 2020 found that, though there was still a viable remnant of CFSF on the common, much of the area which is not leased by sports clubs, schools and other facilities, had become degraded, covered mainly by invasive grasses and vegetation.
The Friends approached Dr Caitlin von Witt, whose field is botanical restoration, to rehabilitate a degraded area of the common, and, with a grant from the Rowland and Leta Hill Trust, work on this project began. The City’s recreation and parks department assisted greatly in felling pines, grading away invasive grasses and creating a circle for planting.
After months of propagating many different CFSF plants, grown from seeds taken from the common and other areas of similar genetic type, more than a thousand were put into the circle where they have, generally, survived without any watering, even though some were lost owing to the unusually heavy rains of this past winter. Both youth groups and residents have assisted in the planting and the consequent job of weeding the area and keeping it free of kikuyu grass.
On Tuesday March 5, the Friends will be holding their annual general meeting. As the Western Cape is presently so beset by wildfires, they have invited Rob Erasmus of Enviro Wildfire to speak on their causes, how wildfires are fought and how the fighters are trained. If interested in this talk or the work the Friends are doing, turn up at the Meadowridge library at 6pm. The talk is free but donations to the cause of the Friends would be welcome.