December 12, 2003
By Lucille Davie
It's the Ja Ja Rasta Rooibos Park and its owner takes enormous pride in the small public area, previously just an untidy dump. And he's got good reason to be proud of his garden - it's a delightful retreat created entirely by his own efforts and initiative.
Prince Baloyi's park is situated at the northern end of Dundalk Avenue in Parkview. It's a tiny piece of lawn ringed with a bed of alyssum, purple wandering jew groundcover, aloes, wild garlic and other assorted plants. Baloyi has placed a metal table in the middle of the lawn, with brick seats. The garden also boasts an old wheelbarrow filled with plants, and a large tractor tyre tumbling with colour. A syringa tree offers shade. It's an area of about 10 by five metres.
The flower bed is interspersed with painted rocks, and has a homemade notice on a pole reading:
Ja Ja Rasta
Farah & Rooi
Boss Park
Made by Prince (Rasta)
And in the corner, he's painted: Nike, with the distinctive brand name swoosh.
Translated, says Baloyi, it's the Rastafarian and Rooibos Park. Standing in his blue pants and blue zipped overall jacket, with a crocheted hat over his dreadlocks, he says he's a Rastafarian, likes Rooibos tea, and wears Nike shoes. It's obvious from the mischievous grin that he sports, that he's very proud of his creation.
"People really love it. The newspaper sellers come and rest here, friends come here," he says, with a twinkling smile.
He bought the spray paint for the rocks with his own funds. And he's not finished with painting.
"I am still going to paint the wheelbarrow."
Six years ago the road was closed to ease a five-point intersection. Soil started banking up against the pavement, washed down by rain, and blocked the gutter and the drain. Baloyi works as a gardener at 84 Dundalk Avenue, the house abutting the intersection.
His employer, Jentina Frahm-Arp, suggested he take over the small rectangle of land and make it his own. He grabbed the chance.
The first chore was to clear the patch of the garbage that the rain had washed into it - out went bottles, cans, papers, plastic garbage.
"It was tall grass, tins, bottles, cement, just a dump," he says.
He then opened the slabs of concrete over the drain, and scooped out the soil that had washed into the drain. This was added to the soil already accumulated behind the pavement, and the garden was in business.
He collected plants from his employer's garden, and was given plants by residents of the suburb. He collected rocks from the nearby golf course or on the roadside, and placed them in among the plants.
The battered wheelbarrow was found outside a house up Dundalk Avenue, dumped as garbage. He straightened the dents and, using bits of palisade fencing and wooden posts, he's raised it, making it a feature of the garden.
The metal table top was another discard found on the pavements of the suburb. The brick column stools were from a house being renovated; the builder kindly delivered them to Baloyi's garden.
He's nurtured a syringa tree on the edge of his garden. "When I started the garden it was this high," he indicates a metre, "It's now tall." Now five metres. He climbs into it and perches happily on the branches. "I lie here and listen to the people who sit talking in my garden, then surprise them when I jump down," he laughs.
He works in his garden after finishing his formal job at 5pm, or during his tea breaks.
His enterprising spirit didn't stop at his garden. He's planted several small strips of pavement at the robot alongside his garden with colourful purples and whites, to be enjoyed by motorists sitting at the red lights.
Baloyi used to be a plumber, back in Limpopo, in a town between Potgietersrus and Pietersburg. He says he finished his last plumbing job, and the company he worked for closed down. He moved to Joburg eight years ago and settled in Parkview as a gardener.
"I am happy as a gardener but it is not better than plumbing," he says.
When asked why he has gone to all this trouble, he smiles broadly. "I told myself I would help nature to grow up. It's a public park, for everyone."
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