Food gardens
Cape Town’s Company’s Garden’s
Dutch Garden
Historical and futuristic
By Carol Posthumus
The VOC Vegetable Garden in the Company’s Garden, Cape Town.
Photo by Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town
T
he Company’s Garden is a well-known urban green space in the heart of the city of Cape
Town. With families strolling around and children delighting in the squirrels, ducks and flocks
of tame pigeons, it is always a pleasure to visit. Bridal parties and languidly strolling couples
give the Company’s Garden – especially when the roses are in bloom – an air of occasion. It is also
naturally popular with tourists.
The Company’s Garden – surrounded by museums and big old
trees – has a historical feel, and from 2014 it has also had its
own food garden, the new Dutch or VOC Vegetable Garden,
which recreates elements of the original 1652 garden back
to life in a new design. It’s a bit of living history, which at the
same time encourages food gardening in the urban space and
the development of urban community gardening (critical as
70% of South Africans now live in urban settings and should be
considering starting their own veggie patch).
While the VOC Vegetable Garden sets out to encourage
urban food farming, it also hopes to promote a “return to the
fundamentals of living and an appreciation of the land and the
need for stewardship of the environment for balanced living in the
urban environment”. Nurturing green and food growing space in
the frenetic pace of cities is increasingly vital.
Refreshment station
The VOC (acronym for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie)
Garden was probably the first formal vegetable garden in South
Africa. The local Gorinhaiqua had moreover long used Table
Valley for the good grazing of Renosterbos and the sweet spring
waters of the area for their cattle and sheep. The Dutch sailing
merchants, decided to set up a refreshment station, or a vegetable
garden, in the Cape Town area in 1652. The perennial springs,
arising from rainfall filtered through the upper ramparts of the
sandstone of Table Mountain, were an important feature drawing
people to the area.
The sailors were dying of scurvy on their long voyages to the
East and back to Europe, and a vegetable garden would provide
the fresh vegetables necessary to give them the Vitamin C they
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needed. Stories are legend from the time of ships arriving in
ports in faraway places with loads of spices and sadly many dead
sailors. In some cases the treasures on board would have included
cloves. If they had realised that cloves were rich in Vitamin C, this
could have saved them. However, in the case of the Dutch sailors’
nutrition and Vitamin C, Hendrik Boom, the VOC’s first gardener
in the Cape was tasked with growing vegetables and fruit in the
foreign clime. Boom was in fact a Master Gardener in Holland,
and had been in charge of the Botanical Gardens in Amsterdam,
and was dispatched to the Cape with the responsibility to start a
nutritional garden.
To educate the present city of Cape Town citizenry about urban
food farming techniques and methods, regular courses are held
for the public at the Dutch Garden. Many groups of school
children also visit the garden during the year, Rory Phelan, the
City of Cape Town’s manager of The Company’s Garden says.
The produce in the garden is also sold at a “Farmer’s Market”
held every Saturday and the vegetables supply the restaurant in
The Company’s Garden.
Dutch water channels
The VOC Vegetable Garden is situated on the site of the old
conservatory and a car park. The design, says Phelan, reflects
the original Dutch Baroque layout, with the stone-lined open
irrigation channels. The new VOC Garden has channels recalling
the Dutch “leiwater” or water channels, providing water via flood
irrigation. But most often watering is done with hosepipes. The
water comes from the Stadsfontein spring in Oranjezicht or the
“Vineyard” spring. The irrigation system is based on the original
irrigation system installed by Jan van Riebeeck.