One of our most beautiful plants at Phillipskop and indeed in the Cape flora itself is Nerine sarniensis. But both the scientific name and the common name, Guernsey Lily (Sarnia is the Latin for the English Channel island of Guernsey), are decidely inappropriate for a species confined to the Western…
For the first 9 months we were seriously wondering whether our whole concept was fatally flawed. The water in the filtration pond immediately filled with silt from the clay and this did not settle out at all. Month after month we waited for the water to show signs of clearing,…
One of our key aims with the natural swimming pool was to ensure that it fitted in with the landscape and ecology of Phillipskop. For this, it was obvious that we would need to do indigenous planting using only the native flora. But indigenous gardening, certainly in the Cape, is…
With the swimming pool constructed it was time to landscape and plant up the surrounding area. The old dam wall was still in place but much higher than we wanted it to be. It needed to be lowered to the same level as the pool wall and decking so that…
