Nestled in the heart of Cape wine country, Babylonstoren has built their work around maintaining the circle of life. (Supplied)
In the magical gardens of Babylonstoren, in the heart of wine country, the circle of life is meticulously maintained, Charlotte Bauer discovers.
A snowy flock waddles across a wooden bridge set above the cycad circle where Dr Ernst van Jaarsveld is busy describing the ingenious mating habits of these rare and ancient plants – let’s just say it involves beetles. In response to the oohs and aahs of the tour group, he interrupts himself to acknowledge the ducks.
“Ja, they’re cute, and they also control the snails.”
Botanist, horticulturist, collector, writer, explorer, “Oom” Ernst, as he is known by everyone round here, is practically as much of a tourist attraction at Babylonstoren as the prickly pear maze which, having recently required a severe ‘haircut’, is no longer quite such an adventure. Nature must take its sweet time.
With his battered vellies and unpruned eyebrows, the genial 71-year-old is a lively trove of stories and tips about the plants and animals in residence in the wilder reaches of the formal garden. He points to an unremarkable-looking bed of ground cover and explains that if you were spending the night under the stars, you’d want to sleep on it because its smell repels parasites. (Kooigoed or Helichrysum petiolare was traditionally used as ticking in pillows).
Ernst is especially fond of rocks. “Everything starts with stone – stone makes soil, and the better the soil, the better you eat.”
An overhead shot of the magnificently designed gardens at Babylonstoren. (Supplied)
We stroll through the autumnal pumpkin arcade – Halloween re-imagined as a sumptuous art installation – through the heat of the glass spice house with fish darting beneath the floorboards, then through the fragrant woodshed housing the succulents containing 3 500 plants in tiny handmade pots that Ernst prefers to water himself. “Watering,” he says, “is an art. You can’t miss one, but too much tender loving care can be too much.”
Now we have arrived at his very own creation: the Namibian Welwitschia rockery, complete with lizards and what he calls a rock piano – “the oldest instrument known to humanity”. It is an arrangement of dolomite rocks from the Karoo mounted on a 30-ton stone base that, when gonged, apparently makes a sound like church bells. In winter the entire rockery has to be tented over to protect the desert plants from the rain. Later, I get a chance to ask Ernst a cheeky question relating to an earlier chat about composting – basically, where he’d like to be buried.
An overhead shot of the magnificently designed gardens at Babylonstoren. (Supplied)
He is not remotely offended: ‘We’re all recyclable, and when I die, I want my ashes – rich in bone meal – to go into the soil of the succulent bins we use to feed the indigenous plants I love so much!”
Throughout the tour, Ernst urged us to pluck, tear, crumble, sniff, and even chew the plants around us.
“Touch. Smell. Taste. A riot of the senses.”
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There are no “keep off the grass” signs at Babylonstoren, no barriers around precious plants –
except for the cycads, the Picassos of nature, which are “branded” with company microdots in case of theft. Still, you couldn’t stuff a cycad in a handbag, which apparently some people do with the citrus fruits.
Fresh produce is grown on the farm to supply the Babylonstoren restaurants. (Supplied)
Much, though not all, of everything planted here is edible or medicinal. It was inspired, as was the layout, by the Company’s Garden in the Cape Town CBD, established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 to supply settlers and passing ships with fresh food. But what you can’t eat or won’t “cure” you in the Babylonstoren garden more than justifies its existence – for having historical value, for telling a story, or simply for being ravishingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that twines humans and nature together and waters the soul.
Take the modest young weeping willow at the edge of one of the farm’s dams. Wholly ornamental, if not exactly ravishing, it is remarkable because it grew from a cutting taken from the original tree that shades Napoleon Bonaparte’s grave on St Helena. The garden rustles with such stories, and stories, I learn, are an abiding passion of the Babylonstoren owners, tech billionaire Koos Bekker and his wife, former magazine editor Karen Roos.
An overhead shot of the magnificently designed gardens at Babylonstoren. (Supplied)
Like all avid collectors, whether of art or matchboxes, provenance is one of the factors that drives desire. Budget, of course, is another one. By all accounts, no expense has been spared, and no leaf has been left unturned, in bringing the four seasons of the symphony that is Babylonstoren together.
“There is a story in every branch,” says Gundula Deutschländer, keeper of the Healing Garden. “The owners wanted a visitor to be able to pick a book from a tree.”
Master gardener Deutschländer is wearing a swirly yellow gipsy skirt, purple vest and sandals, not the khaki shirt and cargo pants I imagined at all – she could be off to AfrikaBurn. It seems that human individuality is also encouraged to thrive here. Deutschländer joined the team 16 years ago, three years before Babylonstoren opened to the public, when “the land was still barren and dead and stinky”.
Taking the brief to evoke the Dutch East India’s produce-rich Company’s Garden and grow useful plants, Deutschländer worked with the French garden architect Patrice Taravella and got digging. The result is a magical potager, a natural pharmacy that deftly mixes form, function and whimsy. Each boxed bed identifies a part of the body, and which plants are believed to be good muti for it: heart, head, blood, lungs, liver.
Nestled in the heart of Cape wine country, Babylonstoren has built their work around maintaining the circle of life. (Supplied)
There are plants to nourish convalescents, a cancer bush for all-around immunity, remedies for asthmatics, diabetics, arthritics and even, according to the label on the lucerne, “enthusiastic sports people”. There is a plant for every mood and ailment, including belching and flatulence (anise hyssop, in case you’re afflicted). It is the only part of the garden where visitors are advised not to consume anything “unsupervised”.
“All my male plants are toxic,” Deutschländer grins. “Except for the fenugreek, which is male but not toxic and is pretty.” She sighs. “But it has no staying power.”
If Deutschländer had to pick one from her copious basket of healing plants, she wouldn’t hesitate. “Rosemary. It’s top-to-toe amazing – mood, memory, hair strength, arteries, concentration . . . If I’m giving a workshop, I always drink rosemary tea beforehand. Settles the nerves.”
Presenting me with a bunch of basil leaves, she waves goodbye and twirls off into the garden in her yellow skirt, darting from bed to bed, talking, touching, brushing bushy tops, lifting up a frond and tutting. I hope the fenugreek makes more of an effort for her. The sun is dipping as I head for the exit. Most visitors have left, but up ahead, a young couple strolls through the citrus grove, arms wrapped around each other, heads touching. You could hardly ask for a more romantic setting.
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