Impatiens flanaganiae

I found these growing on boulder screes amidst (or often dominating) clivias, scadoxis and cycads, in my all-time favourite ravine; a place of rare beauty where I've returned up to 6 times a year for the past 20 years. Dangerous, inaccessible and unknown - its had a persistent pull on me unmatched by any other place of great natural beauty that I've enjoyed. This Impatiens is considered rare; it grows in shade typically on sandstone; has large tubers (used in traditional medicine); and it flowers endlessly through late Spring and Summer.

Shading the precipise

This magnificent shade tree, with its bright-green foliage, is rooted just below the lip of a 100m cliff-face.

Small beauty

Lichens, fungi and insects thrive with wild abandon (and all the rapid predation of a humid sub-tropical climate) in the forests where I play, study, draw my inspiration and ultimately seek new plant elements of aesthetic abandon to introduce into landscaping.

Plants for spiritual and physical well-being

Dlamini (see accompanying picture, at his home in Mtambalala) is a traditional Healer specialising in plant medicine. Not all traditional Healers focus intently on the medicinal qualities of plants (although all are trained in the medicinal use of plants). Some concentrate more on the spiritual, psychological, ancestral or magical realms. Dlamini vociferously identifies and cultivates plants in which he sees potential. Any plant grower drawing from the rich indigenous stock of the Wild Coast (or South Africa in general) cannot help but notice the intense variation of plants, from trees to ground covers and bulbs, with a medicinal (or sometimes spiritual) application in rural society. Urban specialists have increasingly turned to these plants for mainstream researching of potential modern applications in curative and preventative medicine.