African Thunder

A SouthAfrican designer took the Singapore Garden Show by storm with his creative show garden.

- Leon Kluge

Thunderclouds roll over the dry savannahs, lightning transforming the sky into a riot of colour and streaks of fire. The rain brings life to the dry landscape, the sandy soil greedily soaking up the precious liquid. The big bellies of the oldest and wisest members of the bush veld, the baobabs, swell rapidly as they suck up the rain, which must last them through seasons that could well pass without a drop of rain.

The rain also triggers an explosion of colour on the savannah, giving life to the otherwise dry landscape, and once again Africa sings her song all around you. She makes you move to the rhythm of the African heartbeat, the beat that gives life to all – African thunder.

‘African Thunder’ was the theme of my garden at the 2018 Singapore Garden Festival, an event held every second year in one of the best botanical gardens in the world, Gardens by the Bay. This is the world’s biggest flower and garden design show, and the city of Singapore invites the world’s most renowned landscape designers to put on a show of design excellence that attracts over 600 000 garden enthusiasts from around the globe, to visit the show gardens and also interact with their favourite designers.