Food gardens
Babylonstoren garden’ s Vast abundance
by Carol Posthumus
Food gardens often evoke a sense of carefree childhood days- plucking luscious plums, pears, hairy quinces and fresh carrots- from our grandparents’ and parents’ gardens.
Given its large size and its encyclopaedic range of fruits and vegetables, the Babylonstoren garden, encompassing an abundant 3,5ha( 8 acres) provides a repertoire of rich sensory and emotional experiences, nostalgic and new. The garden, located near Franschhoek in the Cape Winelands, is vast and interesting. There are over 350 varieties of plants in the garden, all planted from 2009 to present by the garden’ s talented team of 19 gardeners.
You are sure to find a crop here that was in your grandpa’ s garden- wherever that may have been. The garden has guava avenues, grape vines, prickly pear mazes and indigenous gardens. There are mulberry meditation patches, a 7000-clivia walk on a stream, an earthwormery, a compost zone and tons of vegetables. There are a lot of the environment-enhancing spekbooms planted here. When we visited on an autumn day, the citrus was on the trees – oranges, tangerines, grapefruit and lemons. There is also a sub-tropical crop cluster.
Visiting Babylonstoren’ s garden is a visit to different places, emotionally, intellectually and culturally. It is both peaceful and refreshing to visit.
Situated near Franschhoek in the Cape Winelands, the farm hotel of Babylonstoren is a restored estate( 2007), though its
Cape Dutch whitewashed buildings and spatially generous architecture with a traditional Cape Dutch werf( farmyard) seem established and traditional.
Structure
The farm( 1692), one of the oldest estates in the winelands, was dubbed early on“ Babilonische Tooren” in Dutch, as the farmers in those days thought the hillock nearby resembled the Tower of Babel in the Bible.
Oral history exploring the name of the farm suggests that the area was a linguistic melting pot in the valley, with Dutch, German, Khoi and San languages intermingling with Asian words from the spice traders travelling to the Cape. The visitors to the luxury farm hotel, spa and restaurants are today drawn from all over the world, and Babylonstoren appears to retains its roots as a cultural meeting ground.
The Babylonstoren garden is rated by many South African horticulturists as a must-visit. They feel it is fantastic that the owner Karen Roos and her husband Koos Bekker, have invested so much in the development of such an extraordinary food garden, which draws inspiration and pays homage to Cape Town city’ s heritage as a food garden. The city of Cape Town’ s first formal garden was the VOC Vegetable Garden, which provided fresh vegetables for sailors, who suffered scurvy on the long sea routes. The city of Cape Town was, essentially, born from a garden.
One can truly learn from the Babylonstoren garden that thoughtful and skilful design of a fruit and vegetable garden is imperative. Farm owner Karen Roos – stylish former Elle Décor editor – commissioned architect Patrice Taravella to plan the garden
4
SABI | JUNE / JULY 2016
Images courtesy Babylonstoren