A beautiful, secluded place, the Harold Porter Botanical Garden is situated between mountain and sea, in the very heart of the Cape fynbos region, encompassing five hectares of cultivated Fynbos Garden and 195 hectares of natural fynbos. The Garden is located in the village of Betty’s Bay, about 100 kilometres from Cape Town. In 1938, Mr Harold Porter, an architect and town planner, and two business partners acquired a large piece of land in the Betty’s Bay area. Mr Porter retained a section of this land for development as a flower reserve.
After his death in 1958, Porter’s trust bequeathed the reserve to the nation, to be managed by the then National Botanical Gardens of South Africa, which named the Garden after him.

The Garden is famous for its scenic waterfalls and amber pools. It lies in the centre of the coastal fynbos region, where the flora is at its most abundant. Fynbos (fine leafed bush) is the name for the evergreen shrub land vegetation, characterized by small-leaved, drought-tolerant, hardy plants.

The shallow, sandy soil of the Garden give rise to vlei’s (marshland) in winter with dark acid water, because of the high level of the water table.