The garden is just shy of 360 years old.
Hendrik Boom is the master gardener who started it all, preparing the very first ground on 29 April 1652, in the vicinity of what is now Hout Street.
A Pyrus communis tree (Saffraan Pear) planted around this time still exists today, making it the oldest cultivated tree in South Africa.
Besides fruit and vegetables, Boom laid out a herb and medicinal garden, as well as planting oak trees and roses, among others. The roses reportedly bloomed for the first time on 1 November 1659.
After slaves arrived by the shipload in 1658 (many of them children) they were used as labour and housed in abysmal conditions in a VOC slave lodge built next to the original garden.
From 1679, the fruit and vegetable garden was transformed into a world famous botanical garden, which was watered by an elaborate system of canals fed by mountain water.
A Streletzia nicolai (Wild banana) supposedly planted by Johan Andries Auge, who became Superintendent of the Garden in 1751, still grows in the Company’s Garden today.
When Governor Yonge tried to turn the Garden into his private domain during the British occupation after 1795, the outcry was huge (rightly so), and culminated in the tradition of public access.
The oldest building in the Company’s Garden is ‘The Bothy’, which has been used as gardener’s quarters, Curator’s house, seed store and National Library Committee room.
Finally, the squirrels that have delighted young and old for decades were imported from North America by Cecil Rhodes in the 1890s.
Want to know more?
The Company’s Garden has a long and fascinating history, which is well worth reading at:
City of Cape Town - Company’s Garden
City of Cape Town - Origin and History
City of Cape Town - Recent Developments
IOL - Company’s garden still bearing fruit
Sources: all websites listed above
Image: Little James-David feeding the squirrels for the first time. Photo taken by his godmother and aunt, Alex Tulleken (B-guided general manager.)