GARDEN ROUTE | Local plant with global passports

Hippocrates is famous for having said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” and never has this concept been more popular than now.

It’s a fact that people are increasingly turning towards natural remedies and plant-based products, a trend documented by the World Health Organisation.

Against this backdrop, Cape botanicals, and particularly fynbos, fit neatly into the global wellness narrative.

There are about 9,000 plant species recorded in the Cape Floral region and roughly 70 percent of them occur nowhere else on earth.

The vast majority of these species fall within what is broadly call fynbos vegetation, the biome we get to call home on the Garden Route.

Rooibos is a shrub that grows naturally in the Cederberg region of the Western Cape and forms part of the Cape Floral Kingdom.

Botanically, rooibos belongs to the legume family (fabaceae), not to the protea or erica groups that people often visually associate with fynbos. But it is very much part of the fynbos vegetation type.

It can’t be successfully and widely grown elsewhere in the world due to finicky soil and climate requirements, so it’s exported to Europe, Japan, the United States and many other countries.

In fact, since 2021, rooibos has had protected designation of origin (PDO) status in the European Union, meaning only rooibos grown in South Africa can legally be marketed there under that name.

The range of teas from fynbos plants with health properties now includes honeybush and buchu tea, and these are gaining traction here and overseas, not only in health shops or online, but in most grocery shops.

As I am writing this, I am drinking a rooibos with ginger tea. With a dash of honey, it’s delicious and it’s a bonus that it’s packed with antioxidants and low tannin. It feels like a healthy beverage.

It’s become fashionable to add fynbos into seasonings, bake and cook with them, steep healthy teas, and infuse oils and vinegars with the leaves.

My first experience with the range of edible and healing fynbos plants was when I visited Wildehondekloof Game Reserve just outside Oudtshoorn a couple years ago. It’s about an hour outside the town, a place of great beauty and peace.

At the time it was owner Paula Potgieter’s dream to find a way of using the fynbos herbs in food since they literally grow wild in her vast 4,000 hectare gardens in the mountains.

We picked and tasted herbs with our game guide Clinton Lottering and then chef Andre Goliath spoke of his magic in the kitchen.

Goliath’s passion is feeding people, and he’s stepped it up a notch by adding fynbos herbs to his dishes.

There is a pinch of renoster bos in his roosterbrood. There is a hint of kapok bos in the sauce for his mussel dish, there is wild mint as a garnish on desserts, while he steeps honeybush and kankerbossie tea.

Lottering is one of Wildehondekloof’s field guides who takes guests on game drives and shares his wealth of knowledge about the fauna and flora. He is clued up when it comes to nutritional healing literally from the fynbos and veld.

He grew up in the Karoo and says from a young age his father used to collect plants for his mother. He knew about the healing properties of wilde als and kankerbossie as a child.

Lottering tells me his grandmother is 96 and she takes kankerbossie and renoster bos every day.

“She’s never been sick,” Lottering says.

He says that just one leaf of spekboom a day is packed with vitamin C if you don’t have an orange.

Pop a sprig of honeybush plant into a pillowcase and it induces good sleep, says Lottering.

Potgieter has spent the last couple years learning all that she can with the help of local inhabitants of the valley people who have been using herbs for healing — and not the local pharmacy — for generations.

At first she started to incorporate the plants into meals at the lodge and from there the project grew.

Guests who dined at Wildehondekloof wanted to take their own herbs home and so her store, Klein Karoo Fijnbos, came about in 2025.

“Fynbos can be experienced by anyone interested in using these unique and healthy flavours in their cooking, with a beneficial cup of herbal tea or just relaxing in a fragrant bath using some infused bath salts or body scrub,” Potgieter says.

It made sense that Potgieter would host dinner parties at Wildehondekloof showcasing fynbos.

The tasting normally starts with a short walk in the veld to showcase the beauty of the Klein Karoo and for the guests to see the plants in their natural habitat.

Then Goliath cooks up a storm like rhino bush smoked ostrich fillet, that is then served with vegetables, infused salts, baby marrow with rooibos and a tomato and onion salsa with some false buchu.

A false buchu infused chicken pie is delicious, but also healthy.

Vegans go nuts for the silverbush lentil rissole.

Dessert is a rose geranium infused crème brûlée.

Potgieter says they work with 10 species of fynbos herbs in various incarnations, from adding herbs to the pot to using infused seasoning, oils and vinegars.

With the help of experts in the field, she has compiled a guide to fynbos plants and their alleged health properties, available on the website.

Black rhino bush brings relief from fevers, sore throat and coughs, the aches and pain of influenza. Young sprigs are taken for stomach problems.

Cancerbush acts as a disinfectant for wounds and also helps bring fevers down.

False buchu, when crushed, has a citrus smell, but it also has anti-inflammatory effects, is useful for stress and detoxification and kidney health.

Kapokbos can be used to treat kidney, bladder and heart problems.

The fragrant leaves of the honeydew plant are used as an infusion to treat back ache and high blood pressure.

Wild wormwood, known as wilde als, is one of the oldest and best-known of indigenous medicines in South Africa, says Potgieter.

“It’s used infused in tea for fevers, colds and flu, sore throat, headache. It is used in small doses otherwise it’s dangerous,” she cautions.

It goes without saying that all the plants being used grow in the wild without any pollutants like pesticides.

During the popular Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), which will take place in Oudtshoorn from March 28 to April 4, there will be fynbos tastings.

Tickets can be bought at here.

Wildehondekloof Game Reserve opens its kitchen and the world of food with fynbos to visitors who aren’t staying there as long as there is a minimum of six guests.

See more at www.kleinkaroofijnbos.co.za or contact the company whatsapp @ +27 79 144 4577.

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