PAGE 8 www. mountainecho.co.za 0824938700 The New Greenhouse and Crassulaceae Finally our new Indigenous Plant Sales greenhouse at the Giants Cup Café, 10km along the Sani Pass road, is complete and in service. This attractive addition to the Café building was built by George Coles, and allows us to display and store a wider range of plants in conditions which allow for you, the customer, to better view and choose what you wish to purchase, and to allow for the plants to thrive at the same time. We now have a product list of 21 trees, 17 shrubs, 17 bulbs, 5 groundcovers, 2 creepers and 12 succulent species and varieties. In addition, we have now put out plant name labels and tree labels for over 100 specimens in our beds and gardens, meaning you can see what mature specimens look like. Last month we looked at aloes – this month we look at another succulent family, the Crasulaceae. This is a large family, with the GIANT’S CUP CAFÉ & CRAFTS family name “Crassula” coming from the Latin word Crassus meaning thick, a reference to their succulent leaves. Elsa Pooley’s book list about 20 species found in the Berg – we will look at two of them. Crassula Sarcocaulis (umadinsane in Zulu) is a bush-like succulent which likes rocky areas from the little Berg right up to the escarpment cliffs. It is tough and survives the winter frosts, and so is a favourite food of browsing buck such as duiker. However, even if eaten well back, it returns to life and growth in the spring, and seems none the worse for the wear. It produces bunches of attractive small white flowers at the ends of the branches in mid-summer. The leaves are small and needle-like. It makes a good pot plant, but will also grow well in the garden if not crowded out by other plants. Crassula Dependens is more of a creeping succulent which thrives where there is little competition, areas such as rocky shelves in the little Berg. It looks quite similar to C. Sarcolcaulis, but doesn’t grow big and hence doesn’t form “branches”. It is also evergreen, although it goes dormant over [email protected] MARCH/APRIL 2015 winter. It takes off again in spring, and also flowers with small bunches of white flowers at the ends of the stems. It also makes a good pot plant, being tough and hardy. It will do well as a ground cover in your garden, especially if you have bare and barren areas where little else will grow. Crassula Sarcocaulis and Dependens and over 70 other species of indigenous trees and shrubs are available from Indigenous Plant Sales at the Giants Cup Café, 10km on the Sani Pass road. Open daily 7.30am to 5pm. Enjoy a coffee and delicious scones with homemade jam and fresh farm cream while you read our information booklet and decide which plants your garden needs. Local art works are now also on display. You can also see what is on offer on our new webpage at www.sanilodge.co.za and click on the “Indigenous Plants” link. We will be sending out newsletter emails periodically about what is new and available, so drop us an email at [email protected] if you wish to join the mailing list. Underberg History: - Le Fleur and Sir Albert Hime Lovingly stocked with quality, fairly priced novel crafts & gifts for whole family. Honey, cheese , trout, our own organic homemade fare - rich icecream, yoghurt, farm milk, jams, Simone’s chocolate almond treats, Fair Trade coffee,chocolate & tea. We support small crafters. Breakfast, light lunches, cakes. Nature trail. Good cycle stop off. Cows hand-milked at 3pm. Open 7.30am - 5pm daily. SANI PASS ROAD 0337020330 INDIGENOUS PLANT SALES :Choose from a range of tree and shrub species. Information provided and orders taken. Russell Suchet 0839873071 The Griqua had moved into East Griqualand fairly early on in the 19 th Century and had tried to settle down but they had no idea of handling money as it had never been part of their lives before and as a result they squandered their resources. Many of them became landless having sold their farms for a pittance. There was a demand that the Cape government that had taken over the territory to restore some sort of order should now provide these people with land in terms of an earlier agreement they had made. There was a sum of money that had been allocated to the Griqua but never distributed and the government used this to buy up three farms and allocate them to the more responsible families. The money was insufficient to accommodate everyone and Le Fleur one of the younger fire brands and a perennial trouble maker began to agitate against the government and eventually to advocate actual revolt.. He tried to involve the black communities and get their support but they had endured the various wars that had taken place until quite recently along the border and wanted none of it. Le Fleur was too young to have been involved with the fighting that had taken place in Griqualand West and that had led to their having trekked to East Griqualand so he had no real idea of what was involved and could not involve enough people to Visit Himeville 5 Km from Underberg tract of land eminently suitable for both a laager and a village. Originally surveyed as a farm it had sufficient commonage to support all the horses ad oxen that would come with a village although later this fact was challenged as being inadequate. The building of the laager began in 1896 and was completed by early 1899 at a cost of some thirty thousand pounds we are told. No troops were ever stationed there it being purely for the protection of the residents and the only time it was used for that purpose was briefly in 1906 during the Bambata rebellion but no fighting ever reached the Underberg area. The village was laid out in 1898 and as a name had to be found for it they called it Himeville after Sir Albert Hime then the Minister of Public Works and who was to become Prime Minister of the Colony of Natal in 1900. Sir Albert Hime was born in Dublin in 1842 and graduated from the Woolwich Military Academy. He was very much in favour of the English public school system and he believed that the iniquities perpetrated on the boys at these institutions were necessary in order to produce men that could defend the empire. He became an engineer and was sent to Bermuda where he built causeways and bridges some of which are still in use today. On his return to England he heard of a position in South Africa and he applied being granted the position of Colonial Engineer for Natal and arrived in Pietermaritzburg which was described as being the most clique ridden place in the Empire. He was said to have quickly settled in and as the Colonial Engineer he was a man of importance and much in demand. He had a wife and six sons whom he sent to Hilton College as he felt it was the closest thing to the English public school and had been modeled on Rugby in England and.which was described as being Spartan. One of his Himeville sons was among those 61 Arbuckle Street who arranged the 033 702-1019 purchase of the [email protected] school from its source it within 24 hours or less in case of emerfounder and helped become a real threat to the government. When trouble did flare up however it caused a panic among many of the settlers who had recently experienced the Zulu wars and were in a constant state of wariness in case of further conflict. Underberg was one of the foremost areas if trouble were to take place and the majority of the settlers headed for Green End where Grafton the ex policeman had had the foresight to build a loop holed barn for just such an eventuality. Nothing happened however and one of the men rode down to Kokstad to see what was happening and when he found that the Cape Mounted Rifles had arrested Le Fleur and his few followers and removed them from the area he returned home and everyone went back to their farms after only few days. Le Fleur was taken to Port Alfred and detained there so he was never again a threat to any community and I believe there is a monument at Port Alfred to him today. The upshot however was that there was a strong demand for protection by the government and on their part the government realised that there was a large tract of land about which they had done very little and in fact knew even less so they sent up a delegation of three officers to look into matters and pick a site for a village and a laager. The delegation consisted of two officers from Pietermaritzburg , Col Dartnell and Maj Bru de Wold and Capt. J L Gordon a local resident of Bulwer for local knowledge. The majority would have liked to have the laager situated at Underberg where a store and a few houses already existed but it was on private land and the government never buys anything and it was also under Hlogoma the high hill which made it militarily unsuitable. Three miles north they found a very suitable should we not have stock we can gency (continued page 9)
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