The workshops began at Lotus High School on 10 September, where learners studied plants in  the rich ingenious garden and nursery at the school, established by science teacher Shafiek Isaacs.
They learned how to identify plants with healing properties as well as edible plants. They were taught about the value of indigenous and traditional knowledge and how their gardening supports the preservation of plant knowledge and therefore helps to protect indigenous vegetation. Shihaam prepared wild rooibos tea with honey for the learners and gave them sprigs of indigenous teas to try at home with their families. 
         The learners were gifted notebooks from the poet Barbara Boswell, who would be helping them write poetry at the second session at Princess Vlei. They wrote their thoughts and feelings as they moved through activities to generate material for their poems.
      On the 12th September learners were treated to roosterkoek and homemade jams prepared by Shihaam on the fire at the Princess Vlei braai areas. She infused these treats with indigenous plants so that learners could experience the taste of the edible species that they were learning about.

Learners shared their writing and walked with Shihaam through the fynbos to learn about species like the wild rosemary and skilpad Bessie. Wilde dagga, wilde knoffel, wild rosmary, wild rooibos, bruin salie, skilpadbessie, tabak bos and malva. Shihaam stressed the importance of respecting the plants. 
     Speaking about the tabak bos, she said this sacred plant has been used by women for meditation and reflection. ‘It’s important not to abuse it for just any reason. Remember, a plant has an intention, so our interaction with it is also intentional …’ 
     Learners were also taught about the indigenous khoe princess who gave the vlei its name and asked to write about her relationship with plants and the vlei. Barbara Boswell hosted a session on poetry writing. Learners were taught to free write, then to weave elements of their free writing into a poem to express  their feelings about plants and the vlei.
    In the third session, held at the school, Shihaam told learners about the role of plants in ceremony and how diverse groups of people including the khoe and descendants of the Khoe continue to work with plants to bring healing and restoration to land and their communities. Learners were invited to wash their hands in a water with indigenous herbs and were taught about the cleansing and healing properties of water combined with  healing plants.  Shihaam also provided a plant based balm that she’d made. She explained that all the ingredients in the balm came from custodians who harvest at the right time in the plant’s natural environment,  which boosts the healing properties of the balm.

     In the final session, learners again met at the Vlei and enjoyed rosterkoek and tea made with fynbos plants. Vlei. Learners were invited to share their poetry in a circle and took turns to recite what they had prepared. Shihaam encouraged them to continue working on their poetry and journaling as part of the process. Those who were comfortable enough to share to poems performed their poetry at the Fynbos Fantasia celebration on 25 October. 
     These workshops gave learners a opportunity to engage deeply, using all their senses, with the plants at Princess Vlei; to enrich their understanding of the cultural heritage of these plants, and their relations with pollinators, air, water and people; and to express their reflections an this through poetry

• Thanks to Shihaam Domingo, Barbara  Boswell, Lotus High teachers and learners, and to the City Grant in Aid for funding this project. 

Pelargoniums and butterflies, Ericas and sunbirds, Arum lilies and Frogs, a mouse and a protea, the bietou and the bee… these are some of the relationships celebrated by learners from local primary schools on colourfully painted t-shirts.
The learners were reminded of the flowers and pollinators they saw at Princess Vlei, and asked to select designs, which they then painted on the t-shirts. These t-shirts will be worn at the Fynbos Fantasia celebration on October 25. Some of the teachers at Levana, including the principal Ms Charity, brought their own tshirts along to paint.  
Below are some of the beautiful Tshirts created by these fynbos inspired young artists. 

What dance would you do if you were a pollinator? 
    This was the challenge for the 90 learners from Harmony, Levana, Floreat and Rosmead Primary.who came to the vlei in August for a creative and immersive experience of the wonders of our fynbos floral kingdom.
    The experience was the introduction to our ‘Fynbos Fantasia’ project. The project aims to open the minds of our young people to the incredible variety and beauty of Cape Town’s fynbos, and the interaction of plants and pollinating insects, birds and other animals. It incorporates art, dance, observation and all the senses: taste, touch, sight, scent and hearing to  enable to learners to fully experience our local plants. 
  The learners were given a short explanation of the interaction between flowers and pollinators, and told about the dances performed by bees to inform other bees of where to find pollen. They took part in a meditation where they envisaged being a plant themselves. They were asked to closely observe a flower and the pollinators which visited it. They were told to do a ‘blind’ drawing, where they only looked at the plant and not at their page, to enable them to really observe the plant, before doing a second drawing in which they could look at the page. They also drew any pollinators they saw.

After drawing the plants, learners worked in groups to create a dance honouring the flowers and pollinators. They were guided by dance instructors Thimna and Tauriq, with a rhythm provided by Marvin Saffoor on the drums. These dances will be developed for performance at our Fynbos Fantasia Celebration on October 25.
     The  beautiful drawings are a testament to their paying attention and closely observing the flowers. This close attention enabled them also to note the less visible fauna, such as monkey beetles and bees burrowed in the vygie flowers. An interesting diversion was a carp caught by a local fisherman .
    For young people flooded with tik-tok videos and social media, an afternoon paying attention to and getting excited about flowers is a good antidote to the over stimulation and stress that they experience on a daily basis. 

Other activities in the Fynbos Fantasia project are: 

• A four session workshop for High School learners led by Shihaam Domingo reconnecting the learners with their ancestral roots by exploring ancestral relationships with healing and culturally significant plants. 
  
• Dance and drumming workshops for Primary school learners
• Painting T-shirts for Primary school learners
• A two day workshop with high school learners to create head dresses inspired by fynbos plants indigenous to Princess Vlei
• A celebration on 25 October which will included dances and poems performed by the learners, a performance of Hoerikwaggo, a play by the Jungle Theatre Company, and a parade from Retreat Civic to Princess Vlei in honour of the fynbos plant and animal life. 

These experiences were made possible by funding from the City of Cape Town and the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust managed by Nedbank Private wealth. 

I really love plants …. I love being in nature and finding peace in natural spaces…Even though I live very close I realise I don’t think I’ve ever been here before. I think I’m going to come here a lot more to see some of the animals and explore the biodiversity…. iI’s nice to actually come out into nature and feel that you are helping to restore something  - when you restore the line of healing you restore the land, you also restore something in yourself and in our fragmented society.
      These were some of the reasons which participants gave for joining the Princess Vlei Mandela Day planting on 20 July. Community members of all ages gathered to help restore the wetland environment on the Northern shore of Princess Vlei, in celebration of Mandela Day on July 18. 
       Kamva Nose, a conservation intern with the PVF, welcomed the group of 20 volunteers: ’We want to give back to nature, I come every morning here and hear the birds chirping … for me it is peaceful, a spiritual connection with mother nature .. I hope that when you come here you feel the same connection … As humans, we have responsibility, we are the custodians own nature. So let’s take care of it .’

Waiting for the volunteers were 200 plants, including Chrysanthemoides incana (Bietou) Leucadendron floridum (proteas), Salvia aurea ((Bruin Salie) and  Leonotus leonurus (Wilde Dagga).
    While we were planting, three Retreat residents, Allasandro Thareeq Byron walked past with their two dogs, Fluffy and Max. They are regular visitors and often fish in the vlei. They joined in helping with the planting.
      The Forum’s restoration team created this second pond earlier this year, to bring back the biodiversity that once thrived at Princess Vlei. These seasonal ponds were filled in when the vlei was dredged to prevent flooding over Prince George Drive.  
    We cannot restore the vlei to its original depth, but we are bringing back the ponds.  This will see the return of endangered species such as the micro frog which used to live here but is currently only found at Kenilworth Racecourse Conservation Area. In the old days locals gathered waterblommetjies at these ponds and shallow feeders, such as flamingos and spoonbills, would have frequented the area. (See for more about the ponds).
       ‘In the light of recent statistics of fast disappearing wetlands in our country and globally, this work is so important,’ said Mea Lashbrooke, one of the volunteer planters and a founder member of Princess Vlei Forum. ‘It’s wonderful to see so many here today. I have overheard questions and conversations about Mandela, about saving the planet, about saving the vlei from a mall. We are all learning from one another. Wetland ecosystems are vital to every aspect of the health of the planet and daily life.’
      Kamva reported that the bird life has increased markedly since work on the pond started. While we were planting, we saw a grey heron, cormorants, cisticolas, weavers and robin chats. 

• The Forum would like to thank all the volunteers, as well as the National Lotteries Commission and the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust, managed by Nedbank Private Wealth, for supporting our restoration project. Plants were donated by the Kirstenbosch branch of the Botanical Society of South Africa. We look forward to the flourishing life this pond will bring. 
  

Since early May, The Princess Vlei Forum has been bringing life back to the northern shore of Princess Vlei with the creation of a new seasonal pond (See A Heart Shaped Pond ), to help revive the magnificent seasonal wetland that once characterised Princess Vlei.
     This has been a group effort, with many hands helping to clear invasive species, revive indigenous plants that had been choked by grass and reeds, and plant indigenous species which were once abundant at Princess Vlei.

Planting benefits the plants, and the rich ecosystem that develops around the pound, including ducks, chameleons, frogs, insects, spoonbills and other waders, aquatic invertebrates and many others. But it also benefits all those who have the opportunity to get their hands in the soil and play a role in creating this flourishing life. This is particularly true for our young Princess Vlei Guardians. These experiences show them that you are never too young to help create a future where nature and humans, who are part of nature, can live harmoniously and flourish. They help to create an understanding of and love for the incredibly rich floral biodiversity in the fynbos kingdom, and spark their curiosity and kindness towards the many creatures who live in and around these ecosystems. A particularly exciting discovery has been the resident chameleons. 
      These are some of the planting events we have hosted this year, funded by the National Lotteries Commission.

On 30 May, in an event held in partnership with the Ingcungcu Sunbird Restoration Project,  twenty  Crestway high learners  planted 600 plants,  the following species: Zantedeschia aethiopica,  Elegia nuda,  Leucadendron laureolum, Imperata cylindrica, Berulea thunbergii, Watsonia tabularis, and Ehrharta calycina. Learners were taught about the importance of restoring wetland ecosystems and the role that seasonal ponds play within the broader freshwater system. They were taught how to plant indigenous species and how to idenitify the species that they were asked to plant.

On 16 June, 20 community members braved the rain and  dedicated Youth Day to helping create a better future for our youth. They put in nearly 300 plants, including Pelargonium triste,  Elegia nuda, Pelargonium cucculatum, Thamnochortus spicigerus. 

On 20 June, 32 children from Floreat and Harmony Primary put in 300 seedlings, as well as bag of rain daisies (dimorphotheca pluvials). Other species included Pelargonium Triste, Elegia Nuda, and the beautiful Wurmbea Stricta, or marsh flower. These learners too were given an understanding of how all life forms in the seasonal wetland work together, and how the plants they were putting in would contribute to creating a thriving ecosystem. 

In addition, for the past month Kamva Nose, our intern, has brought 27 students. Working in groups to 12,  from  CPUT to volunteer in clearing invasive plants and weeding our restoration sites. The students have also conducted insect, vegetation, bird, and frog surveys, and miniSASS surveys to assess the aquatic health of the vlei.  Kamva has helped to establish Princess Vlei as a great site for conservation students to develop their practice and get in volunteer hours.
    This exciting restoration project has been made possible with funding from the National Lotteries Commission, as well as the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust managed by Nedbank Private wealth, the Kirstenbosch Branch of the South African Botanical Society, and the Rowland and Leta Hill Trust. 

Reviving seasonal ponds at Princess VLei
By Emma Oliver

 If you had looked at Princess Vlei from Elfindale or Windsor Park eighty years ago, you would have looked across a field of spring flowers to a myriad seasonal ponds where locals gathered waterblommetjies and pelicans and flamingos gathered in large numbers.
     Human impacts have radically transformed the landscape since then. The Vlei was dredged to absorb the seasonal flood waters, creating a single deep vlei rather than a community of flowing seasonal ponds. The bulrush typha capensis grows thick around the shoreline, barring direct access and view of the shoreline. Buffalo and kikuyu grasses have taken over - in the past, hippos, eland and later buck would have kept the grass down. 
      Reviving seasonal ponds, which fill with the winter rains and dry out in summer,  is a critical part of our work in reviving vibrant ecosystems in Princess Vlei, to help us bring back the waterblommetjies, micro frogs and a host of other fauna and flora. We created the first seasonal pond In 2019 on the northern shore line. This year we have expanded our restoration work on this side of the vlei (set back by a City Mowing contractor destroying our plants) and have created a second seasonal pond. The area around this has been the focus of our planting efforts with school learners, tertiary students and community members. 

The heavy lifting was done in April and early May by our restoration team supervised by Neil Petersen, who cut and uprooted out the long thick grass, ensuring no shoots remained to over run the area again. Several sturdy Brazilian pepper trees were cut down, and their deep roots dug out and removed. Other invasives  such as erigeron and the typha capensis were removed. The team also unearthed years of accumulated rubbish - shoes, clothes, plastics, concrete, builders waste, all the usual suspects. 
The soil we unearthed was rich and black, full of worms, humus and healthy biting mole crickets. The pond, by now a heart shaped muddy piece of ground, was planted out with isolepsis grass, to attract micro frogs (Microbatrochella capensis). These tiny frogs, once flourishing at Princesss Vlei, have become critically endangered and are only known to be at the  Kenilworth Racecourse.

The ponds have been filled with the winter rains, and now the planting work is accompanied by the calls of the clicking stream frogs from the nearby reeds (a good sign of a healthy wetland), and a pair of yellow billed ducks have moved in. A number of community and school groups and student volunteers have helped to develop this ecosystem. 
This pond is a collective effort, with many hands making it possible (see Planting the pond). We hope that you will join us in celebrating this beautiful piece of restored life. 

• This exciting restoration project has been made possible with funding from the National Lotteries Commission, as well as the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust managed by Nedbank Private wealth, the Kirstenbosch Branch of the South African Botanical Society, and the Rowland and Leta Hill Trust.

Plastic pollution has a major impact on waterways such as Princess Vlei, harming local animals and creating an unsightly environment for those who go there to find beauty and peace. 
    But it has also become a major global threat, choking our oceans and waterways, killing thousands of sea birds and other animals each year, and multiplying other threats such as as climate change - the production produces greenhouse gases, it weakens ecosystems resilience, and contributes to flooding in cities due to clogged stormwater drains.  . It is now found everywhere, including in our blood, our brains, and breast milk.

     Plastic packaging and bottling has hugely enriched companies like Coca Cola, which take no responsibility for the waste they cause. Much is made of recycling as a solution, but only 9% is recycled, much of it can only be recycled once or not at all.
     It is easy to feel overwhelmed, but every action helps in tackling this life threatening issue. In May, the Princess Vlei Forum hosted a Tackling Plastic Workshop to explore how this issue can be taken up in local communities and schools. The workshop was attended by 15 participants, including 4 facilitators from the Princess Vlei Forum. Others were teachers and learners from Harmony Primary,  and Crestway High School, students from CPUT, and a members of the Ingcungcu Sunbird restoration Project.  
    The workshop aimed to give participants concrete ideas for tackling plastic in their commmunities.
     The workshop started with a presentation by Kamva Nose, which explained what plastic and microplastic pollution is, how it shows up in our bodies and in the environment, and how it impacts our personal health and our ecosystems. He also looked at the 5 R’s - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and repurpose. While recycling, reusing and repurposing have an important role to play, it is clear that our priority is to put reduce and refuse plastic, through consumer choices, and putting pressure on policy makers to make polluters pay, on  and own industries to find alternatives. 
   

The presentation was followed by a group discussion. It  became clear that plastic has become entrenched in our lives, and there are many obstacles to limiting its use. It was stressed that while behaviour and attitude change of communities is vital, it needs to be accompanied by actions to push for policy change, and change in the practice of retailers. A well informed community can help to drive this. 
      After the first group discussion, Denisha Anand did a presentation on examples of campaigns to raise awareness or push back against production. She gave an overview of strategies to tackle plastic waste, and gave examples of community specific campaigns such as the campaign to replace small sachets sold in poor communities in Asia with refilling containers supplied by the consumer. 

The participants then worked in groups to come up with ideas for campaigns in their own communities. Three campaigns were proposed:

• A poster campaign at tertiary institutions highlight the health risks of micro plastic pollution
  
• A creative ‘Monday to Friday’ campaign to motivate school learners to collect litter and recycle where possible
• A campaign to support informal recyclers and litter pickers, and incentivise the collection of plastic that is not recyclable and therefore does not bring in an income. 
  

The workshop has already had an impact, with participants raising awareness and sharing their knowledge. We hope this continues, and look forward to hearing what creative ways they are finding to tackle plastic in their communities

Post by Emma Oliver and Bridget Pitt

Recent visitors to Princess Vlei might have seen our star Hyacinth hunters at work. Sydney Jacobs and his team, working in collaboration with the City, have pulled off a small miracle in clearing this sprawling invader.
    Water hyacinth is an ‘invader’ from South America. Water primrose, which is growing amongst the hyacinth, and Typha Capensis, the long reeds or bulrushes are indigenous, but their vigorous growth can make them invasive.
    These plants, in particular water hyacinth and water primrose, are a growing threat to our waterways and wetlands. Hyacinth reproduces through seeds and runners, and can double its growth in days. The seeds fall into the water ensuring it reproduces the following year. Unchecked, it covers the water in a dense carpet, blocking sunlight and oxygen, and killing aquatic life below.
    These invaders are a major headache for the City of Cape Town in managing their wetlands. The challenges are two fold:  removing the plants from the water faster than they can grow, and removing this biomass from the banks — without destroying the banks and biodiversity in the wetlands. At Princess Vlei, the City has previously relied solely on mechanical removal, which was extremely expensive, damaging to the banks and leading to disasters where our restoration sites were destroyed, plus ineffective as the hyacinth rapidly grew back in the months during Western Leopard Toad breeding season when operations had to cease.

With the injection of funds channeled to Princess Vlei through Nature Connect, and donor funding raised by the Forum, we met with role players from the City in November last year to draw up a strategy for dealing with the hyacinth. This included the use of hand teams operating from the banks and shore, the use of bioagents, mechanical removal from the shoreline and an amphibious weed harvester to remove growth from the water body.
    Action was launched with the release of bio agents by the Invasive Species Unit in December last year, in a controlled area at the inlet to the vlei. The Forum’s contribution is the ‘Green’ boat team, sourced and managed by local eco champion Sydney Jacobs. We purchased three boats, a motor, and gear such as waders, life jackets and cutters. Sydney, who also works at Zeekoevlei, is a genius at effective operations, and fashioned a ‘hyacinth plough’ to push clumps of hyacinth to the shoreline, as well as crafting specialized long necked rakes. By the end of January this year, the team was ready to roll.
    The boat team’s operation is simple but extremely effective. The team cut the hyacinth into squares, working from the boats or in waders from the shore. The motorised boat, the ‘Princess’, pushes these squares to the shoreline, where they are removed by hand or by machine and piled on the shore. The piles are removed by trucks contracted by the City.

The Forum has raised funds for 80 days of labour with the Green team — we are currently at day 55. So far 120 truckloads of hyacinth have been removed off site by the CSRM (Catchment and Stormwater River Management).  The Green team, often up to their waists in the water, cut loose the hyacinth and the boat pushes it out towards the long arm excavator for removal. This week, with the long arm properly in action for the first time, it has been exciting to see the master plan working as per our original design. The machine has hugely accelerated the rate at which hyacinth can be moved, and in a few days created 8 mountainous piles of hyacinth and water primrose on the banks.
    The biomass is taken to a dump an hour’s drive away as it has been declared too toxic for the landfill site at Muizenberg, only 7 kilometres south. Since the water quality at Princess Vlei is the cleanest of all the Vleis, this seems unnecessary and is slowing up the rate at which the biomass can be removed.
The Invasive Species Unit (ISU) have provided labour on the shoreline for removing the biomass, as well as their biocontrol programme. This deploys the megamelus bug and another weevil to feed on the hyacinth and assist in its elimination. The ISU progress was slowed by an invasion of painted reed frogs in their breeding tunnels, which were eating the megamelus. They had to remove these well-fed frogs and start again with the bug breeding programme. It is back on track now and the placement and impact of the bio agents is being monitored. More ‘bugs’ or bio agents have been ordered from Rhodes University, which is where they are sourced, to up their numbers in Cape Town. With bugs, it’s a numbers game and more equals better hyacinth elimination.
    Now that the long arm excavator is working, it has been exciting to see how effective this strategy is, coming at less than a tenth of the cost of a fully mechanised removal. However, critical elements promised by the City have not been delivered. The Long arm excavator came late to operations and the long-awaited weed harvester has not yet materialised. We are awaiting a boom at the inlet, promised for this week.
    Thanks to our combined initiative, the City now has a clear hyacinth management plan, and we are grateful to Cllr Southgate and various city officials for the progress made so far.  However the Forum has been the main driver for achieving the plan, and our green team works longer and harder than City deployed labour. This experience illustrates again that GPVCA cannot effectively be managed by different City departments without over sight. These leads to a lack of co-ordination by different departments, and sometimes disasters due to unsupervised contractors. We need one person to oversee what happens to both the water body and the land on this site. We hope that this experience will spur the City to more effective management strategies and delivery and will persuade the various role players that management under the Biodiversity Management Branch would be far more suited to this important wetland.
    To conclude on a happier note, nature continues to reward any investment made. With cleared banks and access to the water, the moorhens, darters, cormorants, herons, malachite and pied kingfishers, Egyptian geese and sacred Ibis are all more present. The birds love the new perches – the head and platform of the floating Princess are a favourite spot to hang out, as are the three boats, used by the Green team, and anchored permanently in the middle of the Vlei. We will continue to lobby the City to up its investment, plan ahead and ensure that all this work is sustained in the future

• Photographs by Sydney Jacobs, Kamva Nose, Jane Doherty and Bridget Pitt
• This project is made possible through funding by the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust managed by Nedbank Private Wealth
  
• Read more about this project
  

  ‘The river was our mother, and just as you would never harm your mother so we were careful never to harm the river. There was a lot of indigenous wisdom about the rivers’ - Sicelo Mbatha, reflecting on the values he learnt as a child.

This is the message of our Source to Sea project. The project aims to help young people to understand the value of rivers, to our ecosystem, our biodiversity, our physical and spiritual health. The Princess Vlei Forum has designed a workbook with a series of observational and reflective exercises to focus the learner’s journey to understanding rivers.
    A group of high school learners from Manenberg is joining us on a journey to study the length of the Diep River - at it’s source, at the point where it enters the Little Princess Vlei, when it has been canalised, and the estuary at Sandvlei when it enters the ocean.
     On March 29, fourteen teenagers from the Manenberg based ‘Brave Rock Girls’ organisation, went up to Cecilia Waterfall, which is near the source of the Diep River on Table Mountain. We set off on a misty morning, for many the first time they had walked on this iconic Cape Town mountain.

On the way up, we looked at the river, and noticed how it moved rapidly down the mountain, tumbling over the rocks and small waterfalls. We spoke about the indigenous trees growing nearby, and the impact of our history and colonialism on our rivers and forests.
      After an hour of uphill hiking, we reached the waterfall. This perennial waterfall is a perfect place to study moss forests, and the life they support such as the tiny Moss Frog. Learners studied the moss plants through magnifying ‘loupes’ to see the intricate and delicate foliage, and tried to identify the different plants.
      The outing was educational but above all a fun and energetic experience for all, giving learners a good insight into how the Diep River begins its journey to the sea. Further excursions will enable the learners to study the river at different stages of this journey.

• Photos by Robin Moodley and Bridget Pitt
• Thanks to the National Lotteries Commission for funding this project.
  

‘We think Princess Vlei is a good place for a home (for an African swamp hen), except it has small snakes’

This was the view of Tristan, Tauruh and Razmay, Grade 7 learners from Levana Primary in Lavender hill.  The learners attended the wetland explorer experience at Princess Vlei last month. Over a hundred Grade 7 and Grade 5 learners attended the event, spread over three mornings.
       The learners explored Princess Vlei to assess it as a home from the point of view of three species: African swamp hen, Western leopard toad and a dragon fly. They used nets to explore the aquatic life at the vlei. Species found included a dragonfly nymph, water beetles, water.Scorpion, crabs and a tiny leopard toad, as well as several species of fish fingerlings.

Learners also went on a ‘fynbos treasure hunt’, in which they  were tasked to look for various treasures such as a beetle with spots, a creature which uses its legs to sing and so on. They were asked to find and describe their own treasures - these included ‘a long brown stick with a bunch of of feather like flowers gathered together’ and ‘a pink stone that is a very weird shape.’ A highlight of the treasure seekers was the discovery of three  Cape Dwarf chameleons. These elusive creatures have become more plentiful at Princess Vlei since thanks to community planting of indigenous species over the years.

A highlight of the morning was a canoe ride on Princess Vlei with Gravity Adventures. The Grade 5 learners battled a stiff wind on the one day, but all enjoyed the experience.

The restoration of the fynbos not only benefits the creatures and plants, but brings a deep and varied experience to learners from Lavender Hill and other surrounding communities. It provides a resource rich outdoor classroom,  enabling learners to learn much about science, nature, and themselves, while having fun.
     This experience forms part of our environmental education project which is funded by the Hans Hoheisen Charitable Trust, Managed by Nedbank Private Wealth.