In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie traces some of the history of Joburg's urban forests and identifies some of the earliest known trees in the city. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 21 August 2003. Click here to view more of Davie's work.
It’s hard to believe when you stand on one of Johannesburg’s ridges and look out over the virtual forest that makes up the northern suburbs that the city used to be barren, rocky veld dotted with an odd shrub and several streams.
Joburg has the distinction of being one of the world's largest man-made urban forests, with several million trees in public parks, private gardens, and on pavements. On satellite pictures, the suburbs are a green splodge of colour, closely resembling a rain forest.
Mine dumps to the south, urban forests to the north (Google Maps)
The highveld is a typical savannah/grassland system, which means that besides grassland and scattered scrubs, there are no naturally occurring trees. So how did this forest begin, and who planted those first trees?
Before gold was discovered in the area in 1886, there were several farmers on the Witwatersrand. These early farmers brought seeds from the Cape and planted acorn, oak and walnut trees. The Bezuidenhout family, among the first white...
