The Company's Gardens

Description

The Company's Garden, once a thriving vegetable farm for the Cape's Dutch Settlers and the Castle of Good Hope, is now a beautiful 6 hecatre public garden and heritage site. The garden features many fruit trees, a decorative avenue of old oak trees, an aviary, an area for the cultivation of rare plants and a multitude of grey squirrels. It is a favourite walking spot for Capetonians and contains more than 3000 plant species in total. The tea garden may serve nothing special, but the awesome setting more than makes up for its culinary shortcomings.

Government Avenue (which leads into Adderley Street) runs through the east end of the Garden, lined by old oak trees. The Garden's old Colonial-Regency style lodge which is now known as 'De Tuynhuys', the presidents city office, the South African National Gallery, the South African Parliament buildings, and the old slave lodge which now serves as part of the Cultural History Museum as the Iziko Slave Lodge all run along the eastern side of the Garden down Government Avenue. The other sided of the Gardens are littered with old, historical and beautifully ornamented buildings.

Features

• The oldest cultivated pear tree in South Africa (circa 1652)
• A rose garden designed and built in 1929
• A well stocked fish pond
• Dellville Wood Memorial Garden
• A bird aviary
• The Garden Tea Room
• Botanically and historically valuable trees
• Local arts and crafts along the avenue
• Grassy lawns and benches for picnics
• A herb and succulent garden
• Historic statues