I want to congratulate Leon Kluge, head landscape designer, and his team for their extraordinary achievement at the Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s most prestigious flower show, on its opening day on 21 May 2024.
Kluge and his team’s exhibition, named ‘The Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa,’ has been awarded not only with the Best Exhibit in the Great Pavilion with perfect scores from the judges, but they also walked away with the Best New Design Award. The Chair of the Judges in this division said himself: ‘This means perfection’.
It is the first time in history that South Africa has won the awards for Best New Design and Best Exhibit in the Pavilion. Kluge’s design was inspired by the windswept slopes of the Cape’s mountains, with artist Tristan Woudberg’s large clay sculptures depicting mountain ranges to showcase the 22 000 stems ranging from high-altitude fynbos to bulbs from the strandveld.
The City of Cape Town fully agrees with Kluge that our Cape Floral Kingdom is one of South Africa and the Western Cape’s biggest natural assets to be celebrated, enjoyed, and conserved. Kluge’s exhibition includes a wide range of proteas and our unique fynbos species, and of course, with Cape Town being the most biodiverse city in the world, I also want to thank the team in Chelsea for bringing our natural heritage under the spotlight on the international stage.
I’ve watched the video of the exhibition on Kluge’s FB page and want to encourage the public to go online and do the same. The design itself and the display of colours will blow you away. To think we have access to all of this natural beauty right here, on our doorstep, in Table Mountain National Park and at all of the City’s nature reserves.
