Planted to feel like it was always here

Walk the grounds of our hotel, and you might not register the garden as a garden at all. There are no clipped hedges, ornamental beds, or manicured lawns rolling down to the Eerste River. Instead, you might notice grasses and sedges moving in the wind, bulbs pushing up between them, and birds working the seed heads. It looks less like something that was planted and more like something that was always here.

According to DDS Projects’ Danie Steenkamp, who worked closely with Spier’s resident horticulturist, Wilton Sikhosana, and the rest of the team, that was exactly the intention. From the outset, the aim was to move away from a designed garden towards something authentic to the place: planting that ties the buildings back to their surroundings rather than setting them apart from the farm. “The design of the landscape continues a story,” Steenkamp says, “rather than replacing it.”

A rewilded landscape needs time to establish itself. Now in its second spring season, the planting has begun to knit together and fill out. The grasses are taller, the bulbs continue to multiply, and the beds read less as new plantings and more as established veld.

Working with the land, not against it

Spier sits on the edge of the Cape Flats, on sandy soil most gardeners would fight: wet winters, and dry, windy summers. Rather than correct for those conditions, the garden leans into them. Grasses, sedges and bulbs suited to exactly this ground were chosen, many of them endemic species that Wilton Sikhosana and the team propagated specifically for the reimagined Spier Hotel project.

The result is a landscape built to change. As summer fades, the grasses turn to soft gold and brown, their seed heads catching the light. Then, quietly, the first winter and early-spring bulbs begin to emerge: arum lilies, chasmanthe, bulbinella and ornithogalum, bringing fresh colour back into the beds. It is a garden that never stands still.

Rewilding, in practice

“Rewilding” at Spier has meant reintroducing species that once grew here, and managing the whole as an ecosystem rather than as a garden. Nature leads the way, and the gardeners’ role is to tweak gently, enable natural processes to unfold, embrace seasonal changes and lean into the wildness.

The luxury of the wild

There is a deliberate restraint to the planting. It reads as quiet rather than ornamental, a conscious step away from the more manicured landscaping usually associated with hotels. For Steenkamp, that restraint is the true luxury. Natural planting brings wildlife: everything that lives in fynbos and renosterveld, from endemic birds to butterflies and small buck.

It is also what ties the garden to the rest of the farm: the food grown here, the botanically inspired spa, and the wider commitment to stewardship of the land. Rather than a separate feature, the garden is a continuation of everything else that thrives here.

Ask Steenkamp what he hopes people feel walking through it, and the answer is simple: “a place where one can breathe.” Somewhere that feels wild rather than ruled by human hands, where you move as a guest in a landscape that is complex, rich and quietly magical, where beauty and ecology are one and the same.

Of course, a garden like this is best experienced in person, whether you come for an afternoon or a few days. Spring, with the beds full and the farm in flower, is the time to visit.