A recently opened Visitor’s Center in the oldest garden in South Africa explains to visitors the history and significance of ‘The Company’s Garden’.
 
The origins of The Dutch East India Company’s Garden in Cape Town are set against the dramatic background of ‘The Voyages of Discovery’ in the late 15th century. The sole purpose of these voyages of exploration was the search for a sea-route around Africa to access the fabulous wealth to be gained from the Spice Trade. Thus it was plants such as pepper, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg that played a fundamental role in the connection of Western Europe, Asia and Africa, with all the subsequent far-reaching consequences for these continents.

With the discovery of the ‘trade-winds’ that allowed ships to sail from ‘The Cape of Good Hope’ directly across the Indian Ocean to Asia came also the associated problem of provisioning ships for this arduous voyage. It was the ‘Company’s Garden’ at the half-way point on the sea route from Europe to the Spice Islands which sustained the spice trade with fresh water from Table Mountain and, through it’s production of fruit and vegetables, prevented the ravages of scurvy, thereby enabling sailing ships to embark on this voyage across the Indian Ocean.

Cape Town became known as ‘The Tavern of the Seas’ and European settlement of ‘The Cape of Good Hope’ and of South Africa began with this garden. ‘The Company’s Garden’ as it is known today, nestles below the slopes of Table Mountain and is framed by Devil’s peak to the east and Lion’s Head to the west. Rain falling on Table Mountain, which rises to more than a thousand meters above sea level, filters through the upper ramparts of Table Mountain and emerges as perennial streams in Table Valley below, these springs were an important factor drawing people to this area from stone-age times.

This fresh water also drew sailors to this landmark, early Portuguese explorers stopped to provision their ships here while trying to find a sea-route to the east and the lucrative spice trade. One of these explorers, Bartolomew Dias, was the first to discover the Cape in 1488 and named it  ‘The Cape of Storms’. Fatefully, he and half his fleet were lost in a storm off the Cape in 1500.

There were many superstitions about the Cape including the legend of the ‘Flying Dutchman’ and the captain of this ghost ship that was doomed to perpetually battle the stormy seas around the Cape. There was also the legend of the terrifying monster ‘Adamastor’ who, infuriated about his discovery, sent storms down upon passing ships. It was these superstitions and myths as well as conflict with indigenous people known as the Khoekhoen and the political vagaries of Europe at the time, which together, militated against the settlement of the Cape during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

All this was to change forever when the crew of a Dutch ship, the ‘Haarlem’ were shipwrecked in 1647 on the shores of Table Bay and in order to survive, sowed vegetable seeds near a stream of fresh water beneath Table Mountain. They were rescued some six months later by a fleet of Dutch ships returning to Holland and which carried aboard a young VOC ( Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie ) merchant returning home in disgrace after being accused of private trading – his name was Jan Van Riebeeck.

Back in Holland, the ship-wrecked sailor’s reports of the fertility of the land and abundant water convinced the VOC to establish a permanent supply station at the Cape of Good Hope. This decision was also influenced by the fear that at any time the British might annex the Cape. In order to rehabilitate his good name, Jan van Riebeeck volunteered to lead this expedition and so it was that in April 1652 he and 5 ships arrived in Table Bay at Cape Town.

From Jan van Riebeeck’s diary we learn that master gardener Hendrik Boom prepared the first ground in the garden for sowing seed on the 29th April 1652. This makes the garden 358 years old and a Pyrus communis tree ( Saffraan Pear ) planted around this time still exists in the garden to this day and is thus the oldest cultivated tree in South Africa. 

The size of the garden slowly increased until, some ten years later, it had grown to 18 ha. Apart from a vegetable and fruit garden, Boom also laid out a herb and medicinal garden. Once these were established, various ornamental plants were also introduced, amongst which were Oak trees and Roses, the first of these Roses were reported to have bloomed on 1st November 1659.

“ The story of the Garden does not end with vegetables and fruits. Man does not live by food alone, and the utilitarian motive leads on to the aesthetic and civilized, so that as time passed The Company’s Garden became a place of beauty and pleasantness….and of special enchantment for the ocean-weary travellers setting foot in an otherwise strange and perhaps alarming land. And then came the further stage in development, when the Garden became botanical and appealed to the mind as well as the senses..” *

From 1679, Simon van der Stel, Governor of the Cape, and his master gardeners, Hendrik Bernard Oldenland and Jan Hartog, transformed the original fruit and vegetable garden into a world famous botanical garden with indigenous and exotic plants, shrubs and trees. They built an elaborate system of canals fed by mountain water, and many ornamental species were introduced.

Johan Andries Auge, who became Superintendent of the Garden in 1751, planted many indigenous species gathered on expeditions throughout the Cape. A Streletzia nicolai ( Wild banana )  which is thought to have been planted by Auge still grows in the Company’s Garden today.

By the mid eighteenth century, the Garden had become famous, firstly for its beauty and delight; and secondly for the propagation and export of African plants. This had proceeded under the direction of master gardener J. A. Auge, under whose  auspices bulbs and plants were exported to an increasingly lucrative European market. The arrival of Pelargoniums or Geraniums (and their hybrids) and other Cape plants in Europe, date from about this period.

The British occupied the Cape in 1795 to forestall any French interest in the strategic sea route to India and elsewhere. It was during this period that Governor Yonge tried to turn the Garden into his private domain, but there was such on outcry that the traditions of public access to the Garden remain to this day.

In 1848 the Company’s Garden became ‘The Botanical Garden’ which had general public access and at that time began to take on many of the landscape features  which remain until the present, chiefly the sinuous curving pathways indicative of the English naturalistic landscape style which overlaid the Dutch formal grid-layout.

In 1892 it became the responsibility of the Municipal Authority of Cape Town and by 1913 the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch were founded on an estate bequeathed by Cecil Rhodes and the Company’s Garden became a public recreation garden.

This layered landscape has become one of the unique features of The Company’s Garden today. It is a garden in which the formal ‘Dutch Baroque’ landscape style of the early 18th century was overlaid by the informal, ‘Victorian Romantic’ or ‘Picturesque’ landscape style influenced by the late 18th century English landscape designers, namely, Capability Brown, William Kent and Humphrey Repton.

Typical of the Dutch landscape style were formal walkways lined with avenues of Oak trees and clipped hedges which were crossed at right angles by smaller paths. Two such examples still exist : Government Avenue, which is the traditional public promenade through the garden precinct, as well as the main axial walkway through the ‘old garden’ itself. These long straight walkways lead the eye to distant vistas – which may be prominent buildings or natural views. Government Avenue, for example leads the eye to views of Table Mountain and makes it part of a ‘borrowed landscape’. The Dutch Baroque landscape style also included rectangular plant-beds grouped into fours with corners cut away at central focal points. Parterre gardens were prominent and today these still exist at the old Governor’s residence, Tuynhuis, which has become the modern President’s Cape Town residence. This is situated about halfway along Government Avenue, and itself forms a vista from the garden. These elements were typical of the Baroque-era garden style and the Company’s Garden reflected this influence with the combination of the ordered style of the Dutch Kitchen Garden and the “ flamboyant expression of grandeur and power of the officials of the Dutch East India Company “ * who were largely inspired by contemporary landscape influences in Europe at the time, the epitome of which was the Palace Garden at Versailles.

This era of landscape design that emphasised man’s control over wild nature and it’s transformation to his will gave way to the English Picturesque style, which sought to emulate nature in it’s natural beauty and was influenced by the landscape painters of the time who portrayed idyllic landscapes. Victorian landscape design was characterised by this new romanticism that featured curved lines, flowing contours and idealised natural plantings.

The transition between these two landscape styles is captured by The Company’s Garden in which the two landscape design periods are interwoven and layered on top of one another. Axis pathways are linked by a curving ‘sinuous’ pathway that encircles the garden and links the many outdoor rooms within this matrix. The Company’s Garden is unique in this blend of styles and has been conserved as an unbroken link with the past history of The Cape of Good Hope and is a tangible reminder of Cape Town’s heritage which residents and tourists enjoy to this day.