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Speaker 1: Let's go on to an unarguable center of South African excellence,

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Speaker 1: and that is our performance historically and in recent history.

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Speaker 1: At the Chelsea Flower Show returns in twenty twenty six

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Speaker 1: and the South African design, once again put together by

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Speaker 1: Leon Kluger and team, was unveiled yesterday and Leon joins

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Speaker 1: us now from France. Hook Ah, Leon clue, I haven't

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Speaker 1: forgotten Leon.

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Speaker 2: How are you? Yeah? I see that good in you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm terrific. I'm fascinated by And it kind

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Speaker 1: of makes sense when you read it. I was wondering

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Speaker 1: what the theme would be, and then I read that

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Speaker 1: the inspiration is the devastating wildfires which tour through the

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Speaker 1: mountainous series of Caitles past season, and knowing how important

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Speaker 1: fire is to feign boss ecology, it kind of makes

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Speaker 1: sense that you would have that idea.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we always had it in the cards,

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Speaker 2: and I think this year is a good year to

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Speaker 2: bring it to the fourth and also to explain there,

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Speaker 2: it's a double hed sword, you know, the one side,

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Speaker 2: it's extremely tragic to a lot of farmers and people

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Speaker 2: losing their livelihoods and animals. But on the other side too,

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Speaker 2: we are here in between the fain Boss, which has

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Speaker 2: been here for hundreds of thousands of years, and they're

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Speaker 2: dependent on fires to survive. And what happens after a

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Speaker 2: fire is quite incredible.

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Speaker 1: But how do you I mean, there's an idea fabulous

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Speaker 1: makes perfect sense given the particular nature of fein Boss

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Speaker 1: and a lot of its regenerative capacities, and the excess

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Speaker 1: number of fires and the way they burn hot because

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Speaker 1: of the presence of exotics and all of those things

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Speaker 1: that we've been discussing on the radio and experiencing our

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Speaker 1: citizens over decades. But how do you make those points

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Speaker 1: in a floral display.

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Speaker 2: So the display this here is called life after Fire,

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Speaker 2: and it tells the story of the blaze coming through

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Speaker 2: or the ashes, and the burnt wood and the burnt proteas,

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Speaker 2: and how those proteer heads and some of the other

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Speaker 2: fame will start to burst open because those mothers have

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Speaker 2: been waiting so many years fifteen years or so, with

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Speaker 2: all their baby seeds in a kind of protection to

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Speaker 2: release it. And that is the magic that happens after

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Speaker 2: the fire, and the journey of the seedlings going back

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Speaker 2: into the ashes now the sunlight right back onto the

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Speaker 2: floor of the ground which I haven't had for many,

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Speaker 2: many years, and now start to sprout for life. And

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Speaker 2: all the bulbs and the orchards and annual seeds have

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Speaker 2: been waiting underneath these large shrubs for easily fifteen twenty

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Speaker 2: years to now show their faces again. And so we

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Speaker 2: moved through this landscape. One side's burnt, and we have

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Speaker 2: this vortex of burnt sticks and prot your heads in

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Speaker 2: a hopefully an artistic way, with a stream coming through

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Speaker 2: this devastation, all the little ceilings starting to hatch, and

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Speaker 2: on the other side the maturity of it all and

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Speaker 2: what it again achieved. And that is why a biodiversity

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Speaker 2: is so immense.

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Speaker 1: I'm lucky enough to had some insight into how these

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Speaker 1: Chelsea flower shows are put together through conversations with you

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Speaker 1: and with Jenny Malcolm and other members of your team.

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Speaker 1: And so when Jenny said to me in at Whatsapped

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Speaker 1: this morning lyon that when she saw the design she

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Speaker 1: almost had a fit because she knew her life that

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Speaker 1: just got that much more difficult.

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Speaker 2: Her lists got considerably longer.

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Speaker 1: But hey, if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well,

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Speaker 1: and it's worth making it difficult for those who then

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Speaker 1: do it well, So, I mean it really is. It's

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Speaker 1: extraordinary the amount of pre planning, I mean the actual

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Speaker 1: not only getting the flowers to London. From London, no,

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Speaker 1: some you can't export, and it's just incredibly complicated getting

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Speaker 1: the plants there and then putting them all together in

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Speaker 1: the relatively short time that you have. It's an absolute

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Speaker 1: miracle that when the show opens that there is this

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Speaker 1: finished thing of wonder.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what make our display, which is one of

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Speaker 2: the biggest there so unique, though, is that we bring anything,

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Speaker 2: well most of it from South Africa up there with

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Speaker 2: logistically and PaperWorks absolute Nightmay, but a lot of overseas

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Speaker 2: exhibits that exhibit they actually buy this stuff right there

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Speaker 2: in London and from the flower market, so we are

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Speaker 2: not like that. We bring it all the way from

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Speaker 2: the farmers throughout the country all the way there, which

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Speaker 2: makes it very, very complicated. That's why the guests at

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Speaker 2: the review had a lot of smiles, but the team,

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Speaker 2: I think the smiles are a bit subdued.

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Speaker 1: And I mean you've had a really busy year in

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Speaker 1: between Chelsea Flower Show in May and then Chelsea in

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Speaker 1: Stanford in what August was it? Because you've been around

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Speaker 1: the world, winning awards in just about every geography there is.

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Speaker 2: We just came back from China last week where we

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Speaker 2: won based on show for South Africa at one of

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Speaker 2: the biggest style shows. I have one point three million people.

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Speaker 2: I walked through the garden in seven days. It's just

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Speaker 2: incredible and that was I didn't expect that one, but

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Speaker 2: we received a bow as it's really beautiful and it's

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Speaker 2: an incredible show. So our next one, which we will

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Speaker 2: do straight after Chelsea, is Singapore, which is the tropical

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Speaker 2: show in the world where so African blands will also

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Speaker 2: be displayed.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well you got I'd better not keep you for

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Speaker 1: another thirty seconds, otherwise you'll fall days behind your busy schedule.

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Speaker 1: Leon Klueger the international landscape designer who and botanist and

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Speaker 1: presenter and writer who is responsible for the Chelsea Flower

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Speaker 1: Show design along with many many other things. As you

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Speaker 1: might have heard,