My name is Kenneth Vincent Wheeler and I started this site.
This site was created using MyHeritage.com. This is a great system that allows anyone like you and me to create a private site for their family, build their family tree and share family photos. If you have any comments or feedback about this site, please click here to contact me.
Our family tree is posted online on this site! There are 15924 names in our family site. The earliest event is the birth of Taetwa (30). The most recent event is the death of Richard John Manley (Mar 2012).
The site was last updated on May 29 2012, and it currently has 78 registered member(s). If you wish to become a member too, please click here.   Enjoy!

Yet, how many of us know the story behind this attraction in Pretoria? In spite of popular belief, the Jacaranda is not native to Pretoria and South Africa, but to South America, and in particular to Brazil and Argentina. The Jacaranda is also found in Australia, Mexico and Zimbabwe.

In 1830, Baron von Ludwig, a Cape Town tobacconist, imported Jacaranda trees from Brazil to Cape Town. In 1888, a visiting horticulturalist from Cape Town by name of Tempelmann, imported two Jacaranda trees from Brazil and planted them in front of market-master Japie Celliers’ house, Myrtle Lodge, in Sunnyside. This house and garden now forms part of Sunnyside School at 146 Celliers Street.

In 1903, James Clarke, the then state horticulturalist, was assigned to cultivate trees for the State Nursery in Groenkloof. He ordered seed from Australia, and found that a packet of Jacaranda seed was accidentally included in the batch. Clarke then cultivated the seed and in 1906 donated a few of the trees to the municipality of Pretoria. These Jacaranda were planted in Bosman street and their display was so spectacular that it was decided to start with a big scale planting of Jacaranda. In due course, the Jacaranda became so popular and extensively planted that Pretoria became known as the Jacaranda City.

Photo on right hand side is one of two first Jacaranda planted in Pretora in 1888 by D J Celliers