Salve For The Heart

In the Cape Winelands valley of Wellington, a terraced garden abundant with salvias is a lush sanctuary for its new owners

- Catriona Ross

In the 32 years Marguerite Steyn and her husband Lourens have been living in Wellington in the Western Cape, they’ve always opted for a low maintenance, structured town garden – but Marguerite secretly wished for a sweeping green wonderland overlooking a stretch of water.

‘Our daughter was getting married and we couldn’t seem to find the right venue,’ she says. ‘Then Klein Optenhorst came on the market and my ears pricked up. Imagine a wedding under the big oak.’

It was the cool canopy of venerable trees that attracted Marguerite: a yellow wood, a southern magnolia, wild olives including one gnarled specimen roughly 400 years old, oaks and plane trees with weaver bird nests overhanging the dam. Spellbound, the couple bought the property in April 2016.

Situated on the outskirts of the historical Wamakersvallei in the Cape Winelands on dusty Bovlei Valley Road, Klein Optenhorst features an 1820s farmhouse surrounded by farms and mountains. Here, previous owners Jenny and Naas Ferreira cultivated a terraced garden which Jenny, a salvia expert, opened to the public biannually.