Why everyone is raving about the garden at Babylonstoren

Wandering through the celebrated garden at this Franschhoek wine estate could make you feel like a French aristocrat or an African royal, writes Andrew Unsworth

It's not every day that a garden on the scale of Babylonstoren, the Cape Dutch farm dating back to 1692, is created - maybe because it's not every man or woman who can afford to do it.

It's massive and must have cost a fortune to landscape, plant and maintain since it was started in 2007.

It covers 3.5ha of formal beds divided by straight pathways into 15 sections, each different. There are over 300 species of plants in it, most edible.

story_article_left1

It claims to have been inspired by the old Company gardens established by the Dutch in Cape Town in the 17th century, a small part of which survives in altered form to this day, but it is unlikely that that garden was nearly as well designed or decorative as this one.

The garden is the baby of Naspers chairman Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roos. They'd sought help from French architect Patrice Taravella, after seeing his cloister garden in the grounds of a restored 12th-century monastery in France.

Aware that just about everyone I know had already been there, I managed to get to Babylonstoren, which means "Tower of Babel", in late spring. The garden was settling into summer with vegetables on the go and fruit forming on the pleached trees.

There is an entry fee of R10 which is used to support local education intiatives.

We got a tour from one of the gardeners, Gundula Deutchlander, who bubbled with enthusiasm about the place.

She told us what to nibble on, from fat spekboom leaves, good for just about every ailment, to the cinnamonic petals of the South American feijoa or pineapple guava bush.

A formal garden reads like a pattern from an elevated view: many French ones were intended to be viewed from one's chateau as much as walked in.

Babylonstoren can only be explored at ground level and the visitor is faced with myriad options of where to start. You could walk a few kilometres up and down the avenues, peach pips crunching underfoot, or head straight down the middle axis, which runs east-west from the farmhouse werf or yard, or wander up and down the straight side walkways and peer into every square garden.

Many path intersections are marked by huge rose pillars, wooden domed pergolas covered with climbing roses.

full_story_image_hright1

The gardens are all different: a chamomile lawn to take your shoes off and walk on, a meditation or a bird-watching garden, ranks of soft berry canes and rows of vegetables, some chicken coops, a row of beehives, a mosaic floor around a tree, a maze of opuntia (prickly pear cactus).

There's also a beautiful north-south avenue of gnarled old guava trees brought from Dal Josephat, near Paarl. It's not the only example of instant history transplanted here.

There is also a massive weeping mulberry tree and a sapling of an apple tree, grown from a cutting off the one Isaac Newton was sitting under when he saw the apple fall and discovered gravity (It's in Lincolnshire, UK).

There is a young medlar tree, related to the apple but not as edible and rare in this country although Jan Van Riebeek apparently planted the first in Cape Town.

This is, at first impression, a classic French, or medieval, formal garden awash with lavender hedges, but you soon realise it has modern and even African twists. There are long, rectangular fish ponds with lotus flowers, lilies and waterblommetjies, home to tilapia and trout.

A stand of old cycads has been planted near the stream, whose banks are home to wild olive trees now underplanted with 7,000 clivias.

Near the entrance is a display case of shards of the blue-and-white Asian china dug up in the garden; the colour scheme is repeated throughout. The succulent and aloe garden owes more to the Karoo than to anything in France.

Of course it's all organically grown with companion planting, and ducks to help with the pest control.

Despite all the design, it's not busy; it's relaxing and tranquil. But it isn't friendly, personal or intimate.

"Perhaps people find it peaceful because it's not aggressive," designer Taravella has said. "Beauty is not an objective, it is the result."

• If you fancy a visit, note that Babylonstoren has two restaurants, the up-market Babel, and the Greenhouse, serving light meals and teas. Booking is essential at the first, not the second. For more information, babylonstoren.com