Cape Town: Deputy Mayor of city Cape Town – Alderman Eddie Andrews congratulated Team South Africa for winning gold at the Chelsea Flower Show. The team exhibited on the ‘The Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa’! and it is for the first time that the South Africa has achieved something like this.
Alderman Andrews said, “The City of Cape Town wants to congratulate the South African team for winning gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show for displaying their exhibition on ‘The Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa.’”
“I want to congratulate Leon Kluge, the head landscape designer and his team for their extraordinary achievement at the Chelsea Flower Show. It is world’s most prestigious flower show and held its opening on May 21, 2024,” said the Deputy Mayor.
He added to his statement and said that the exhibition by Kluge and his team which was named as ‘The Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa’, was awarded with the title Best Exhibit in the Great Pavilion with perfect scores from the judges and along with that they also received the Best New Design Award.
Reportedly, the Chair of the Judges in the division praised the winners and marked, “This means perfection.” However, it is for the first time in history that South Africa has won two awards at a competition.
Designs by Kluge were inspired from the windswept slopes of the Cape’s mountains with artists Tristan Woudberg’s large clay sculptures depicting the mountain ranges to showcase the 22,000 stems, which ranges from high-altitude fynbos to bulbs from the strandveld.
The City of Cape Town completely agrees with Kluge that our Cape Floral Kingdom is one of the South Africa’s and the Western cape’s biggest natural assets that needs to be celebrated, enjoyed and conserved.
Kluge’s exhibition included a wide range of proteas and our unique fynbos species and Cape Town is 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,” said Andrews.
Deputy Mayor Alderman Eddie Andrews also mentioned that he watched the video of the exhibition on Kluge’s FB page and wanted to encourage the public to go online and do the same.
The design itself displays colours that will blow away anyone. To think of this, we have access to all of this natural beauty right here on the doorstep and in Table Mountain National Park and at all of the City’s nature reserves.
