CPT: A Garden & An Art Gallery

Leaving St George’s, we spied signs for nearby attractions. After perusing them, we decided to go to the Company’s Garden, a heritage site that is billed as the oldest garden in South Africa.

The name “company” is a reference to the Dutch East India Company, which established the garden in 1652. Their reason for doing so was to provide fresh vegetables to the settlement and provisions to passing ships.

After the 1680s, the garden was beautified and it became a gathering place. It was made famous by writers of various nationalities. They claimed that visitors who had seen the celebrated gardens of Europe and India all agreed that this garden had the greatest variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers collected in one place.

Today, we found neither vegetables nor a great number of colorful blooms. Nonetheless, the manicured grounds were very nice and the shaded paths provided respite from the sun. As well, we enjoyed seeing squirrels scampering about … even one that was an albino, and spent time watching an Egyptian geese family … the goslings seeking shade under mama goose.

Seeing a white building at the end of one of the garden paths, we walked in that direction to see if the building housed anything that might be of interest to us. It did. We had arrived at the National Gallery of Art … also known as the Iziko South African National Gallery.

We paid the admission and went in to enjoy not just the colorful and varied art, but also the air conditioning. Turns out that we had happened upon a hidden gem.Read more