An Eden Called Babylonstoren

Babylonstoren has all the abundance of its namesake, producing and serving the freshest organic produce with an unerring sense of style.

- Kevin Beaumont

If you haven’t visited Babylonstoren near Franschhoek yet, put it on your bucket list. I doubt there’s a more stylish food garden in the land, nor one that is doing as much to change perceptions about the aesthetic appeal of food gardening.

When you enter the garden through the thick, old, white-washed walls of the Cape Dutch werf, one of the oldest and best preserved farmyards in the country, you enter a world of abundance that’s literally there for the taking. In front of you lie elegant allées of beautifully formed fruit trees, intersecting others in an intricate geometry of squares that make up quarters of larger squares, going on as far as the eye can see.

Reach up and pluck a succulent plum as you pass, or lean down and scrabble amongst the leafy espaliered step-overs at your knee to select a golden apple. Bite into it and taste joyful combinations of tartness and sweetness dance across your palette. This is how apples are meant to taste. Then sit down in one of the shady arbours and gaze down yet another fruitladen allée as you relish your gift from the garden. Contemplate a view of crisp salad veggies in one of the squares, planted out beautifully in alternating stripes of green and burgundy leaf vegetables. Relax and enjoy the abundance of this Garden of Eden. It’s exactly what your hosts at this special place want you to do.

It’s nothing new, really – since the socalled hortus conclusus monastic gardens of yore, which were always productive rather than merely ornamental gardens, it’s been noted how enclosed gardens such as this one have a strange power to heal the mind and body, and promote a sacred sense of inner wellbeing.