Join a Flower Tour to South Africa

Have you always wanted to visit South Africa, but been nervous about finding your way, or overwhelmed by the choices available, once on the ground?

Do you love flowers and plants, and floral design? How about food?

If you have been squirreling away funds for a special holiday - this could be it.

Fellow South African and New Yorker Sylvia Clow-Wilson has created an extremely well curated flora-forward tour to South Africa from March 12 - 21.

Sylvia is the proprietrix of Cape Lily, a floral design studio in Manhattan. Her tour partner is renowned floral designer Susan McLeary.

The flower focused itinerary kicks off after touchdown in Johannesburg with game viewing and accommodation at Black Rhino Game Lodge (above) in the Pilanesberg National Park, before moving south to gorgeous Cape Town for three nights.

Here you will meet local gin brewers and mixologists, and join Roushanna Gray for a Veld and Sea forage (see my Gardenista post about her immersive classes) and meal.

You will visit one of my favorite places in the world - Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden (above), and hike on Table Mountain, which is one of the natural wonders of the world - a wilderness within a city of millions, where you will encounter fynbos at foot level. Fynbos is a storied biome within the Cape Floristic Region, one of the six plant kingdoms on the planet. It is the smallest,  but the most diverse.

You travel to the stunning farm Babylonstoren (above) with its famed kitchen garden and restaurant.

You will enjoy lunch at Babel (above) before submerging yourselves in two full days indigenous floral design workshops with Susan.

The tour culminates in a Veld to Vase dinner hosted on Langkloof Rose Farm outside Wellington, under the beautiful southern African night sky

The tour cost is $5,875.00 and Sylvia is offering to include airfare (details when you get in touch with her). For a 20% discount enter the code FORAGE when booking.

South African Airlines currently has flights hovering in the $1,100.00 range, and Sylvia can also connect you to partner airlines. Everyone meets at OR Tambo International on March 21st before 2pm.

For more information, to talk to Sylvia directly (you will have questions), and to book, visit Cape Lily. Remember your FORAGE code!

(If you are concerned about the water crisis in Cape Town, you will be there for three nights and will follow the guidelines at your accommodation. Following them you will not be thirsty or dirty. The farms you will be staying at rely on borehole water, drawn from an aquifer, rather than the dams and reservoirs supplying city water.)