South Africa’s Garden Route

The ‘Garden Route’ is a stretch of about 300km – sandwiched between the mountains and the sea – on the southern coast of South Africa. Incorporating the towns of George, Wilderness, Sedgefield, Knysna and Plettenberg Bay this is a popular road trip for local and international travellers. The Tsitsikamma and Wilderness national parks conserve the largest remaining tracts of temperate forest in southern Africa and have recently been ‘re-branded’ as the Garden Route National Park (one of UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves). In this design, a massive Outeniqua Yellowwood (Afrocarpus falcatus) towers above a VW Combi on the road close to the Storms River bridge in the Tsitsikamma forest; a Knysna Turaco glides overhead on crimson wings.