Musings: Easter, Cape Town & Newness Afoot

I have always loved this point in the gardening year. Early spring feels a little like opening a fresh notebook - clean pages, sharp pencil, and the sparkling promise of newness. 

Several years ago, I began a January ritual. I’ve always found my mood to be closely tethered to the weather. Most of the time I rather like that - it feels appropriate, given I work in an industry so inextricably bound to the outside world. But I will admit, those dark and sodden January days -when the garden sleeps and everything feels suspended - can be hard to rouse myself through, even with an abundance of tulips to look forward to.

So, a few years ago, I started escaping January. The solution: Cape Town.

Sunshine. Space. An endless procession of beautiful gardens to wander through and gather inspiration from.

I left my own garden at home in safe hands. Before flying out, I planted a rather ambitious number of bulbs (almost recklessly late in December) and immediately began worrying about them sitting in cold, saturated soil. So I deployed a small team of cloches across the planters and beds to keep the worst of the rain off. Cloches are so often thought of as spring accelerators, but in our climate they are just as useful as winter umbrellas, regulating moisture as much as temperature.

I’m very pleased to report that everything has since emerged, and the garden is now properly waking up -  always a relief after any slightly experimental December planting decisions.

 

Something New for Spring

Over the past few months I have also been designing our Chelsea 2026 display and refining a new product range, which has been quietly in development for quite some time.

There was a lovely sense of synchronicity in the process, a fortuitous meeting with renowned metal artist, Etienne De Koch, meant I was able to prototype some of the new pieces whilst I was away, and then photograph them in situ resplendent summer bloom. A dream pairing of design and landscape.

It is something I have wanted to make for years - taking something inherently agrarian and reimagining it as something architectural.  I’ll share more on these very soon, but it has been very satisfying to finally bring these ideas to life.

 

Cape Garden Highlights

Some of my very favourite gardens are in the Western Cape, and I returned home feeling very creatively full. I thought I would share a few that never fail to replenish the reserves.

 

Stellenberg Gardens

This privately owned garden is breathtaking — a testament to the owner’s creative vision, horticultural knowledge and a lifetime of careful work. Hand-painted Delft tiles depict vignettes from around the garden, areas dedicated to plants indigenous to the Cape sit alongside voluptuous borders and exquisitely clipped topiary designed by David Hicks — plaid translated into green architecture. The reflection garden is threaded with rills and pools, and the kitchen garden looks towards Table Mountain, surely one of the most extraordinary backdrops to any vegetable garden in the world.

 

Vergelegen Estate

Vergelegen, meaning “far away”, feels entirely true to its name. Though only about an hour from Cape Town, it is a total sanctuary and antidote to the modern world. There is a distinctly English sensibility here, thanks to a 19th-century owner who brought over an English head gardener. Billowing borders, fine lawns, and a rose garden that would not feel out of place in bucolic England, all framed by mountains and Cape light.

Babylonstoren

Sister garden to The Newt in Somerset (who use our cloches in their kitchen garden), the main body of Babylonstoren is laid out as a sequence of ‘mini’ gardens, each distinct in character. Some feature edibles, cacti or fruit trees encircled with mosaics. Others house poultry in beautifully crafted homes. There are also glasshouses with collections of clivia, medicinal plant beds, and even a Karoo garden, a nod to the arid inland ecosystem of the Western Cape. It is structured, theatrical, and deeply productive all at once.

 

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

Kirstenbosch sits at the heart of the Cape Floral Kingdom — the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms, yet one of the most botanically diverse. Flashes of Crocosmia pepper the landscape. Proteas appear in endless sculptural variations. Agapanthus grow with the same casual abundance as daffodils in England.

The garden also boasts a precious collection of cycads, which are so precious they have their own alarm systems to protect against theft from plant collectors.

One of my favourite indoor plants, scadoxus, grows outdoors, and geraniums sweep across whole hillsides - slightly embarrassing when I think of my own delicate potted specimens at home, endlessly shuffled around to capture winter light.

If you’d like to see more, I’ll be sharing some short garden walks and films on Instagram over the coming weeks on @clavertonbeth on instagram. 

That’s all from me for now.

Back in Somerset, the garden is waking up, the workshop is very busy, and plans for Chelsea are beginning to properly crystallise, which is always an exciting moment in the year.

I’m also very much looking forward to sharing our new designs with you, stay tuned.

Wishing you a wonderful Easter weekend, hopefully with plenty of time spent in the garden.

 

Beth