Steven Hammer

Twenty-one years ago Bruce Bayer invited me to work at the Karoo Garden. I realize now that Bruce’s invitation was characteristic of the man. Generous, wholly unexpected and wonderfully timed, it solved major problems as neatly as possible while also being horrifyingly irregular. (I was nearly tossed out of the country for exceeding my visa and was only saved because the allseeing computer had blinked.) During my nine months in Worcester I got to know Bruce and his garden – it really was his garden – quite well.

For a place so out-of-the-way, Karoo Garden was remarkably active and original. Everyone who had a cogent connection to South African succulents had visited, worked, or volunteered there. They came to study and snip the collections Bruce and others had amassed, they came to see Bruce and his family, and they often rested in the half-spartan guest quarters. Altogether it was a beautiful place, filled with colour and life. The central display rockeries were the most convincing failures I’ve ever seen. The formal part of garden was surrounded by a large circle of nearly uncontrolled nature. Rudimentary paths led one through wildly diverse tangles and back to the formal garden and several greenhouses.

The houses – hot, green and lath – were filled with a wide range of collections from several families. In a tiny glasshouse the usually elusive Anacampseros bayeriana, then unnamed, swelled so happily that its gravel-topped tray regularly erupted in babies. Between two houses, some admirable Gethyllis found a perfect niche; Heaven should smell so sweet. Adromischus toughened up under lath and a shimmering riot of Oxalis made me wonder at their rarity. A long and narrow house topped with ageing yellow fibreglass provided the conophytums with filtered light and also made a haven for the curling night-feasting worms which loved them as much as I did, for other reasons. The same house harboured a first-rate collection of haworthia. Though large, it was actually skeletal and symbolic. Four exquisitely sombre plants of H. mutica var. nigra stood in for their pressed, fallen brethren and for concatenationary relatives as well. There were also two magnificent plants of H. marumiana var. dimorpha, blacklaced tarantulas. Nearby, in a wide but shallow tray, H. bruynsii actually multiplied.

Fertilizer use was rare. Lean plants and anorexic budgets were the order of the day, yet research proceeded well. Larry Leach had an assistant, as did Pauline Perry, along with space and peat for her bulbs; I had a morning maid(!), and Daphne Bayer cooked delicious vegetarian meals. (It was our shared vegetarianism that brought us together in the first place.) The situation allowed me, as it had allowed many others, the precious luxury of time, time to think, read, and wander. Small wonder I miss it.

In Bruce’s view the core collections at KG lay in the sheets, records, and photographs – not an attitude I appreciated at first. But one of the reasons he wanted me there was to assist in the making of specimens, along with revamping the living collections. Those activities, not as contrary as one might think, occupied much of my time. We also took trips, short and long; Robertson, Ceres, Springbok – and Montagu, where I first saw the fascinating, wax-striped Ruschia [Brianhuntleya] intrusa. Bruce not only knew this hyper-obscure mesemb (and myriad others); he could tell me exactly where else he’d seen it, what conditions fostered it, and could speculate sensibly on its affinities. Bruce had an exact recall for habitat and life-style, for colour and texture. I realized that I was expected to develop such recall as well; it was part – by no means the hardest part – of the necessary equipment if one actually wanted to attempt an understanding of such grand mosaics as the Ceres Karoo.

Bruce was not a boss one liked to disappoint. He could be spookily severe but was sly as well. One day one of the big overbosses ventured up from Kirstenbosch. I overheard Mr. Big querying Bruce in the kitchen. “So how many boys do you have?” “Seventeen – at the moment.” Bruce had just three real boys but, pre-post-apartheid, “boys” still meant labourers. Bruce’s reply conveyed his discomfort with the term in a way that registered without, so to speak, excess force. The position of Karoo Garden rested on nuances of funding, culture, and politics – at odds, often enough, with Bruce’s forthright nature. “Words were given to us to speak the truth” — so Charlotte Bronte tells us.

Before Bruce left the garden we took a reflective and productive trip to Namaqualand. When we returned it was time for Bruce to leave the garden, but in a sense he took it with him. When next in Worcester I saw that Bruce had set up a flourishing collection downtown: a seedling factory, a forest of leaf props (including a perpetually polished and blushing form of H. emelyae var. comptoniana), a tray of the satiny Tylecodon atropurpurea, then new; the works! The salient pivots, love and curiosity, had been privatized. Those who craved paint-by-the-numbers botany wouldn’t find it there, and indeed they won’t find it in these pages either. What they will find is the work of a man with an absolutely unusual gift from, for, and to nature. ♦