A magical South African garden that blurs into the landscape of the Western Cape
Bethlehem Farm in the Cape Winelands’ Dwarsrivier Valley was named by its first owner Pierre Simond, the pastor and leader of French Huguenot settlers to the Cape of Good Hope towards the end of the 1600s. Conditions were trying. The ‘black south-easter’ wind scoured the valley in summer. And, in winter, rivers would break their banks, isolating people on their farms. Wild animals. Wild winds. Wild rivers. Yet he found inspiration in his remote dwelling at the foot of the majestic Drakenstein mountains and, as a scholar and author, perhaps peace in writing. His re-rhyming of the Psalms of David into a less arcane, more accessible form of French was the first theological work published in South Africa.
Three centuries later, another writer, Dominique Botha, and her family – also drawn by the magnetism of the wild landscape – made Bethlehem their home. The buildings were in a state of collapse, and the property was run down and neglected. ‘We found the houses were an interesting local idiom that can be traced back to gabled houses in the Netherlands,’ she says.
As the land was cleared, forgotten structures then revealed themselves: animal enclosures from the 1800s, weathered stone walls and ancient fruit trees. Among the old walls is a small writer’s hut for Dominique and an area known as the Deer Garden, after its Dido Crosby bronze deer sculpture. ‘It’s my special place,’ she says. This part of the garden is now a favourite spot for lazy weekend lunches and intimate parties. ‘To live in a space previously occupied by animals always makes the best home,’ Dominique reflects.
When the landscaper Danie Steenkamp first visited Bethlehem, he was captivated by its wildness. The Dwars River borders the property’s lower edge and the Drakenstein mountains rise at the top, creating a natural corridor for flora and fauna. Guinea fowl roamed round the old houses and there were Cape eagle-owls in the trees. ‘We knew the garden would need to retain the wild essence we were drawn to – a place where the humans felt like guests,’ he says.
Raised on a nearby farm, Danie has a personal connection to Bethlehem. By chance, he found out that his mother had, as a girl, played in the stream that still runs through the property. With a deep knowledge of local plants and sensitivity to historical species introduced to the Cape over the centuries, his vision for Bethlehem was to honour the site’s architectural and Huguenot heritage, using endemic and indigenous plants to champion a new biodiversity. The result is a garden of rooms, each with its own personality: a flower garden, a kitchen garden, fruit orchards, a wild fynbos garden – a richly diverse plant biome unique to the Western Cape – and the whimsically named Deer Garden.
The old homestead provided a natural framework. Courtyards nestled between buildings became intimate garden rooms, fragrant and romantic. In the flower garden, old-world charm abounds. Lacy pink mophead hydrangeas, scented ‘My Granny’ roses and local salvia varieties happily coexist with Echium candicans, valerian, daylilies and mature English oaks. ‘I wanted the courtyard gardens to evoke memories of visits with friends and family, where you leave with a cutting of your favourite flower,’ Danie says. In the kitchen garden, an established pear tree, ‘Williams’ Bon Chrétien’ – transplanted from elsewhere on the farm – now anchors the space, offering shade and a perch for watching dragonflies in summer. At night, espaliered quince and lemon trees perfume the air when it is too hot to sleep.
The same thoughtfulness has been applied to the fruit orchard and, though it is substantially larger than the kitchen garden and only five years old, one would be forgiven for thinking it had always been there. Inspired by the formal fruit gardens laid out by the Dutch in the 1650s when the Cape was a refreshment post for eastbound ships en route to India for spice trading, it now spans 2,200 square metres.
Today, the orchard is a profusion of apricot, plum, pear, apple, citrus, cherry, fig, pomegranate, mulberry, macadamia and pecan trees. Clad in roses ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ and ‘Albéric Barbier’, an arbor creates a gloriously fragrant canopy. Clouds of lilac scabious surround a hand-carved boulder, now a feature water basin fed by a natural spring. Mixed hedging – Kiggelaria africana (wild peach), Buddleja saligna (false olive) and Searsia angustifolia (taaibos) – form windbreaks, while offering shelter and food to birds like Cape robin-chats, wagtails and fork-tailed drongos.
Beyond the orchard, in an area that was once the werf or backyard of the old homestead, a small gate leads into the 7,000-square-metre fynbos garden. Redefined to echo the Drakenstein mountains at its boundary, it is filled with low-lying fynbos grasses and bulbs as a tribute to the Cape Floristic Region. Sourcing endemic species wasn’t easy, but the reward is a garden that blurs the lines between cultivated and wild, flourishing naturally with little intervention.
Dominique walks in the garden and on the mountain every day. ‘It’s a thrill to see geraniums, wild grasses, watsonias and indigenous bulbs thriving on the slopes – and again in my garden.’ The fynbos garden hums with life. Iridescent malachite sunbirds flash through the air, porcupines uproot bulbs and, of course, there are snakes. ‘Paradise must always have a snake,’ she says. ‘Otherwise, it’s not paradise’.
Danie Steenkamp: ddsprojects.co.za
Elsa YOUNG1/9Scented evergreen shrub Salvia chamelaeagnea.
Elsa YOUNG2/9Purple broom Polygala virgata.
Elsa YOUNG3/9Red-hot poker Kniphofia uvaria.
Elsa YOUNG4/9Rose-scented Pelargonium capitatum with yellow Helichrysum cymosum.
Elsa YOUNG5/9Aristea capitata.
Elsa YOUNG6/9Scabiosa africana.
Elsa YOUNG7/9Wachendorfia thyrsiflora.
Elsa YOUNG8/9Common button bush Berzelia lanuginosa.
Elsa Young9/9Watsonia marginata or fragrant bugle lily.
