Babylonstoren - South Africa: a double inspiration.

In August 2011, works were in progress when I visited Babylonstoren, an old Dutch farm in the Cape Winelands in South Africa. Scaffoldings surrounded the white thick walls of an old building near the parking, drawing my attention to the architectural heritage of the first settlers. Thatched roofs, grand gables and dazzling whitewashed walls featured the H-shaped main house and the old outbuildings, some of which date back to the origins of the farm, and were echoed in the newly built guest cottages. I found a property with the charm and solidity of the 17th century and the freshness and efficiency of our days, a smiling, inspiring and ever-changing place that invites you to discovery and relaxation. The garden is in the centre of this homestead, hidden from the road that connects Cape Town to Franschhoek by the farm buildings, trees, vineyards and cultivated fields. It is an eight-acre formal garden, a huge rectangle overflowing with life arranged along three main axes. Rectilinear paths cross them, creating a grid of themed flowerbeds filled with herbs, fruit trees and vegetables, edged by espaliered apple trees and low walls, and dotted with pergolas of roses, pots, ponds, and simple benches. There is a double inspiration behind this garden: the tradition of the Company’s Garden and the suggestions of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the name of a French architect, Patrice Taravella, who developed it.

Plan of the Company's Garden, Peter Kolb (1727)

The creation of the future Company’s Garden was among the first tasks of the earliest settlers that founded Cape Town on April 7th, 1652. Under the command of Jan van Riebeeck, and the order of the Dutch East India Company, they set up an outpost to supply the Company’s vessels with fresh water, vegetables and fruit during their journeys towards India. Near the fort, a rectangular plot of land was cleared from weeds, ploughed and divided into smaller parcels. The gardeners sowed and planted with stubborn enthusiasm, but it took at least one year before they could manage the sudden wind-gales, terrible storms, floods and excessive dryness that had compromised so many crops. They planted trees as windbreak and local shrubs along the boundaries as protection from wild animals; a ditch surrounded the Garden and an irrigation system was arranged. Gardeners worked hard, learning from their experience, experimenting with plants from other parts of the world but also cultivating the indigenous food and medicinal plants the natives used. Over the years, the Garden flourished and expanded, producing vegetables, herbs, cereals, fruit and vines for the increasing population of Cape Town and the Dutch vessels that called at Cape of Good Hope. Ornamental plants were introduced and, by the end of the seventeenth century, the Company’s Garden became famous for its activities of propagation and cultivation of the local flora, whose beauty and richness had attracted the attention of many European plant collectors. It was the first step towards the future of botanical and pleasure garden that we see today in central Cape Town.

The garden at Babylonstoren recalls the first years of the Company’s Garden in many ways, but the most immediately perceptible are its shape and division in regular smaller beds, and cultivations that privilege useful and edible plants. Vegetables beds change according to the seasons. In August, the end of winter in the southern hemisphere, grey-green cabbages stood out among orange and yellow nasturtiums and a coat of crispy straw, contrasting with rows of glossy green beets with a purple heart. A long row of figs warmed up against a wall. The long and patient work of pruning the espaliered fruit trees was nearly completed when I visited the garden, revealing the geometrical rigid shapes of the bare branches of apples, quinces and pears. More than 300 fruit trees are planted in separate beds, from “Almond + Bees” to “Subtropical.” “Berries,” for example, is a promise of soft, tasty, red and blue summer fruits, with a selection of 90 plants of blueberries, 10 for each of the 9 cultivars from Brigitta to Tiff Blue, 16 gooseberries, 40 blackberries, 34 raspberries and 12 redcurrant. “Stone Fruit” is the triumph of apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, kiwi and granadilla. At Babylonstoren, the daily harvest is the raw material for Babel, the restaurant opened in 2010 in an old sheep enclosure. The original structure was retained, enclosed with glass panes, and equipped with an appropriate modern interior. Here, vegetables from the garden often end up not only in the recipes but also on the tables, as original centrepieces.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Assyrian interpretation

The name of the restaurant, Babel, reminds the second driving idea in the creation of the garden. Babylonstoren, or “the tower of Babel,” is the name of the hill beyond the garden, a focal point that guides the eye along the cultivations towards the open fields and the blue sky. The “tower of Babel” was the biblical tower that stretched out towards the heaven, built after the Great Flood. A symbol of arrogance and pride that God punished scattering people over the face of the world and confounding their language. Antique sources identify the place where the tower of Babel was built in Babylon, from the Hebrew babel or confusion. The city of Babylon, built in the fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, today Iraq, was also famed for the Hanging Gardens, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The debate about the location, use, structure, but also the very existence of the mythical gardens is still going on. Beyond the historical truth, however, I was fascinated by the descriptions of the legendary Gardens handed down over the centuries. The Gardens were built as terraces supported by tiers of arches whose vaulted roofs in stone, protected with reeds and tar, were reinforced with baked bricks and cement, isolated with lead, and covered with a thick layer of earth so that every kind of tree could thrive. An ingenious, as much as invisible, irrigation system connected to the river was also created. It was a garden of abundance and pleasure, a sumptuous and refined place, perhaps, the gift of King Nebuchadnezz to his wife Amytis, who was homesick for her native mountains in Media.

The images of these two different gardens inspired Patrice Taravella when he started his work at Babylonstoren in 2009. The French architect, garden designer and writer took to South Africa his experience and knowledge, and the architecture and atmosphere of his medieval garden in France, the Prieuré Notre-Dame d'Orsan. His work at Babylonstoren continues. His last addition, created with Terry de Waal, is the “puff adder” walkway, a timber tunnel that winds along a stream like a snake, among olives and eucalypts, protecting the tender clivia lilies from the sun.

Last year, works were in progress when I left Babylonstoren. Where masons collected their tools and wrapped their pipes, architects rolled up their designs, and gardeners checked for the last time the shapes of future scented flowerbeds, a superb garden took shape.



Further reading:
The Smallest Kingdom, Mike and Liz Fraser, Kew Publishing, 2011.   

Identifying the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: The Tamarisk and Date-Palm, August, 25, 2011
http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/
Dalley, Stephanie, Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Resolved, Garden History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1993), pp. 1-13. Retrieved from:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587050

Links:
Babylonstoren, R45 Road, between Paarl and Franschoek, Franschhoek, South Africa
www.babylonstoren.com/

Prieurité Notre Dame d'Orsan, Maisonnais, Patrick Taravella
http://prieuredorsan.com/

Photos:
TravelinaGarden
except :
Plan of the Company's Garden, Peter Kolb (1727).
http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/facilities/Pages/TheoriginshistoryTheCompanyGarden.aspxhttp://www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/facilities/Pages/TheoriginshistoryTheCompanyGarden.aspx
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - Assyrian interpretation
http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/http://jstorplants.org/2011/08/25/identifying-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-the-tamarisk-and-date-palm/