Company's Garden

From the Cathedral, we revisited the Company’s Garden, the oldest garden in South Africa. It was first created as a refreshment station for the trade route that rounded the tip of Africa between Europe and the east. Ships sent by the Dutch East India Company would stop by after months at sea and stock up on fresh produce grown in the garden, hence ‘The Company's Garden’. Master gardener Hendrik Boom prepared the first ground for sowing on 29 April 1652. The settlers sowed different kinds of seeds and kept detailed records each day. Through trial and error, they managed to compile a calendar which they used for the sowing and harvesting throughout the year. At first they grew salad herbs, peas, large beans, radish, beet, spinach, wheat, cabbage, asparagus, and turnips among others. They caught fish, trapped wild animals and traded with the Khoisan people for cattle and sheep in exchange for copper and tobacco. By 1653, the garden allowed the settlers to become self-sustainable throughout the year. By 1658, nearly every garden plant of Europe and India was already cultivated in the garden, though potatoes and maize were not yet introduced.

Before 1680, the Company's Garden was mainly used to produce vegetables, but then Simon van der Stel redesigned the ground with the aim of beautifying the garden. Later, the garden was made famous by writers of various nationalities, who extolled its virtues, claiming that visitors who had seen the most celebrated gardens of Europe and India were agreed that nowhere else in the world had such a great variety of trees, shrubs, vegetables, and flowers in one place.

Today, the garden is home to various statues and memorials, including ones of Cecil John Rhodes, Field Marshal General Jan Christian Smuts, and Major General Sir Henry Timson Lukin. It is also where you will find a surprisingly large number of pure white squirrels! The much more common grey squirrel, which is indigenous to North America, was introduced to Cape Town by Cecil John Rhodes at the beginning of the 20th century. In the past century or so, a mutation of albino squirrels has emerged. We were really surprised when we saw the first one and rushed to take photos of it. By the time we’d seen 30 or 40 of them, we quickly became blasé about them 😊.En savoir plus