Leon Kluge’s fynbos triumph at Chelsea - with foxes sipping rooibos

South Africa’s fynbos stole the show at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, earning three prestigious awards with an unprecedented display of 25,000 stems of cut flowers. Leading the team in London was Leon Kluge, a renowned botanist and landscape designer with global accolades. Kluge told BizNews that the team - including Tristan Woudberg - faced logistical challenges, from coordinating harvests across 30 farms to transporting delicate blooms via Dubai to London. He said that having overcome funding uncertainty in previous years, South Africa’s future at Chelsea looks far more secure, thanks to backing from the Grootbos Private Nature Reserve. The display will now return to South Africa to Stanford - the heart of the fynbos cut-flower industry - so everyone who helped bring it to life, as well as the local community, can enjoy it. What was particularly special this year, according to Kluge, was an unexpected set of visitors: London’s foxes. They came to drink from a river that he and his team recreated in an amber hue, coloured with rooibos tea to reflect Cape rivers, leaving their footprints in the sand.