Our beautiful landscape

A feature of the landscape of North Riding is a low, narrow ridge of rock supporting dense bush vegetation, very distinctive in the otherwise typical grassland of the middle Bankenveld on the Halfway House granite dome.

Amongst the flora on this dyke are what is probably the most southerly specimens of ‘Ficus salicifolia’ or the Wonderboom, at another point are the only Acacia nilotica growing naturally on the Witwatersrand.

 

North Riding Dyke Forest

Extraction from an article written by W.R. Barker in 2004

The North Riding Dyke Forest

– a Vital Witwatersrand Environmental Heritage

The North Riding Dyke Forest is located on a diabase dyke or narrow volcanic intrusion in a 6km crack in the granite extending from Golden Harvest in the south to Boundary Park in the north.

The forest has flourished on the rich dyke sol for the last 30 million years and is one of the last remnants of Prehistoric Johannesburg.

The forest is part of the Origin of Humankind Environment. We all owe our origins to the Evolution of early humans who certainly sheltered in the very same olive trees, dombeyas, Acacias and dozens of other trees which survive today in the North Riding Forest and have flourished on our North Riding plots for the last 300 million years.

The Dept. Agriculture & Conservation Environment has for the last 60 year protected the North Riding Forest as we can see on the Google Satellite Image.

Huge building projects such as Northgate were obliged to preserve the Dyke Forest as a priceless Environmental asset.

North Riding cannot afford to destroy the Dyke Forest.
The Dyke Forest must be preserved as a heritage for future generations.