The Company’s Garden

The Company’s Garden features a long, straight central path lined with towering oak trees that divide the city center. Jan van Riebeeck started this plot in sixteen fifty-two to grow fresh produce for the Dutch East India Company ships rounding the Cape. It served as a vital vegetable patch for sailors suffering from scurvy. Today, the garden holds the oldest cultivated pear tree in South Africa, a gnarled survivor planted in the sixteen hundreds that still produces fruit every year.