It is with great appreciation that I stand before a really amazing team of professional book creators. Thanks to Pippa Parker, who heads Struik Nature and whose unending and infectious ideas spark off so much I can hardly keep up! As a result of Janice Evans’ incredible ability to create a visual feast, I look at this book in awe, and with the team of professional editors, layout designers, and competent and willing book creators like Colette Alves, I am thrilled to hand over my writings and recipes, knowing that they are putting in place a great and fascinating bouquet!
Once again, I thank my long-time friend, Annatjie van Wyk, who has played a part in so many of my books, for her patient typing of my many handwritten pages. Bless you for your ever willing assistance!
To Phyllis Green, for her numerous photographs of all the old familiar plants in the Herbal Centre gardens, and for the new beauties she has come to know and photograph, my most grateful thanks always.
To my daughter, Sandra, my endless gratitude for her new recipes and exciting food ideas, her endless support, her interest in all things edible that build health, and her kitchen garden that stretches further and further in front of her restaurant, which gives hotel school students and young chefs new ideas and inspiration.
Flowers are surely the most beautiful of all God's creations. They say, 'I love you', 'I'm sorry', 'Please forgive me' and 'Thank you'. Flowers send blessings and good wishes. They are present in bouquets and posies at the beginning of our lives, throughout all the celebrations and great days, and also on the not-so-great days. And at the end of our lives, flowers speak of grief and mourning, of sympathy and compassion, of loss and the great change and challenge that death brings.
All the more precious is the role that flowers play in our day-to-day lives, where they can be incorporated into food, and used in bathing, washing, and healing of big and little wounds. Flowers are well loved, respected and appreciated. They thread their beauty into every aspect of our time here on Earth.
Is it any wonder, then, that they become our companions when all else becomes too much, too exhausting and too worrying? Just a breath of their fragrance, just a pause to look deep into the heart of a flower and experience that moment of upliftment, changes us for the better.
So here is a salute to flowers, a feeling of gratitude and wonder that nature gives us so much that betters, inspires and uplifts us. And here is to flower gardens everywhere!