INSPIRED: Centurion couple Kirstien Smith and Willie Jacobs said they were inspired to start a garden in their tiny yard. Pictures: SUE MACLENNAN
Turning trash into living treasure could be the theme of the annual Boknes Garden Club show. What you see in the village’s Daniel Scheepers community hall for two days every December is testimony to can-do attitude and sheer koppigheid.
Walking into the hall, you find yourself in a colourful forest of leaves and fruit. In a row of reclaimed 25-litre paint buckets, everything from baby and big tomatoes, green beans, squash to marrows and peppers reaches up towards the ceiling.
At the heart (and head) if this annual celebration of “iets van niks” is Sars Pretorius. When you arrive at the hall, you’d best start by greeting him, because he knows exactly what’s happening in which part of the exhibition, and in what order you should take it all in.
“It’s really not easy growing a garden in Boknes,” he says in Afrikaans. “Let alone grow a vegetable garden.”
One of the things he and his fellow gardeners have had great success with is vertical farming.
“People think you need lots of space to grow food,” says Pretorius. “But just look at this: you could have a tiny square of cement as your yard and you could still grow a beautiful garden.”
Centurion couple Kirstien Smith and Willie Jacobs were very impressed.
“Our place at home is very small,” said Smith. “We never even thought of growing anything there, but this has changed our minds.”
The main currency of Pretorius and his fellow gardeners is resourcefulness. They regularly retrieve buckets, pipes and other discarded hardware and wood from the landfill and re-engineer it into growing systems that you would pay a lot of money for in a a hardware store.
A colourful harvest display on a table boasts no fewer than 17 kinds of vegetable that the gardeners have cultivated.
“You know what the conditions are like here: wind, heat… we struggled for years before we got it right, and what we’ve got right, now we want to share that with the community.”
Put this event on your calendar for next December: you might just be so inspired that you end up with an improbable garden of your own!
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This article was first published in Talk of the Town, December 18, 2025. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays
