Of pigeons and squirrels

Cape Town. 30.03.1. Bella Buckland, 6, feeds the pigeons in the Company Gardens. Picture Ian Landsberg

Cape Town. 30.03.1. Bella Buckland, 6, feeds the pigeons in the Company Gardens. Picture Ian Landsberg

Published Apr 17, 2014

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Cape Town - Last week it was explosions at the Science Centre, while this week it was the pigeons in the Company’s Garden.

We tried to explain the extremity of it to her beforehand, but at just six Bella Buckland is not familiar with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which quite frankly looks like a Disney flick compared with these things.

Throw down a handful of peanuts anywhere in the garden and they materialise in their dozens in a matter of seconds.

I rather like holding out my arms and allowing them to cover me, but I can understand how it would terrify a child.

Bella was keen to feed a squirrel, but they weren’t any around, so we flung our peanuts far and wide until they and the pigeons were gone.

Later, a small furry creature scuttled across the pathway.

“A squirrel!” she squealed.

“Um, no, honey, that was a rat.”

“I want to see a rat!” she yelled.

“No, you most definitely do not,” I told her. “And your mother is going to kill me,” I said silently to myself.

That’s the thing… the Company’s Garden has many wonderful features, like the oldest cultivated pear tree in South Africa, estimated to have been planted in 1652, which is when the original Dutch settlers established the garden as a victualling (don’t you just love that word?) station to service and re-provision spice-trading sailing ships. It also has a sundial dated 1781, and a well dating from 1842. The garden also has many other historical features, like statues.

The beautiful plants, trees and various gardens – many of which have been there for nearly 100 years – go without saying, but I have to be fair and say it is a little depressing to arrive early in the morning to find most of the benches occupied by the sleeping homeless. It is, however, the perfect people-watching place.

There is now an official visitors’ centre, but it’s not overly helpful, although there is a rather nice little pictorial history display.

You can buy a booklet for R20, which will allow you to take a self-guided walk of the garden, or you can download it from the website.

 

The City of Cape Town’s website for the garden (www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/Pages/TheCompanysGarden.aspx) has lots of information which should ignite a fire in you to visit the attraction. There is currently a project under way to recreate a vegetable garden (alongside the rose garden), but the only way you can find out more about that is from a signboard at the visitors’ centre.

Apparently everyone has been too busy to update the website or provide any proper details. That’s our city at work for you. - Weekend Argus

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