Vergelegen Gardens - Stellenbosch

Entering through a stone gateway, flanked by two huge urns, you have a magnificent view of the old homestead. There are steps leading down to a brick path that takes you to the front door of the homestead. To the left of the path is a walk through pergola covered in bougainvillea. The path to the house has wide herbaceous borders with lawn beyond on either side. Huge camphor trees of considerable age, some planted in the 17th century, dominate the landscape. Gardens are set out in special areas. One of these is planted with David Austin roses. Each large bed has a different variety of rose, all perfumed. Spectacular!

In all the shaded areas are myriads of hydrangeas, unfortunately not yet flowering. Two fish shaped ponds with water lilies in them were either side of a path leading to the library, formerly the wine cellars. A lavender path leads to the modern wine tasting area. On either side behind the lavender are herb beds divided by parterre box hedging.
Behind the house is a large lawn area suitable for large scale entertaining and functions. Indeed the staff were in the process of removing a large marquee obviously used in a recent event. Surrounding and beyond the lawn are a wetlands area and walk followed by a camphor tree forest with designated rest and picnic areas.

Throughout the gardens are a number of both old and new buildings which are part of both the public and private estate, for instance the aforementioned library(old) and wine tasting area(new). Two of the other older buildings are used for eating. There is the Rose Terrace, with another highly perfumed rose garden in front, which is café style eating and then there is the Lady Phillips restaurant with a serious menu. We chose to get serious and found ourselves at a table outside beside a small lawn which had resident peacocks and a cat. The peacocks were well used to visitors, indeed they clearly considered them a significant advantage as they would take food from the hand, the hen more readily than the cock.

We had an excellent lunch which we washed down with a very nice Vergelegan 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon.
We visited the homestead which is open to the public and did a wine tasting in the tasting area and which is covered in another post. Unfortunately the winery tour was completely booked up so we decided to quickly move on to Waterford Estate for another tasting.

You can visit the Vergelegan web site at http://www.vergelegen.co.za/ and the photos can be found at www.picasaweb.google.co.uk/idurrellmeister .