Latest news with #Karoo
Time Out
5 days ago
- Time Out
Spier Hotel's luxe glow-up is worth extending your stay for
Founded in 1692, all South Africans know Spier, usually thanks to the bottle of wine you take to your friends. For those who've visited in the last decade or so, the association is likely the conferencing element, the cheetah encounter experience or the birds of prey. None of those are available anymore (except good wine, still plenty of that) as Spier embraces a revamp that, frankly, feels more like a rebirth. The vibe is country but classic The new hotel resembles nothing of its former conferencing fame. Their 155 rooms were transformed into a boutique hotel with 80 rooms. The hotel is more of a retreat with endemic flora along paths that connect the various Cape terraced buildings. Every room and suite has a scenic view, whether it's the river, the gardens or the mountains. If you're looking for a space to touch grass, this is it. From using plants propagated on the farm to the repurposing of tables and lamp bases from the previous furnishings, the carbon impact of the revamp was carefully considered. Rooms exude effortless elegance with simplistic design. Luxurious touches feel like home, but better: think Karoo wool carpets, solid oak floors and silk linen and cotton textures. The details make the difference I usually leave minibars as I find them. Not here. They're crammed with Spier's award-winning wines, beers, soft drinks, iced tea and all the good stuff: white chocolate honeycomb, salted caramel marshmallow bars, roasted nuts and biltong - all included in your rate. It's the little touches, like the pot of honey and a fresh lemon beside the loose leaf rooibos tea grown on the farm, or the heated floors in the bathroom. Tempting as it is to become one with your fireside couch, wine in hand, I'd encourage you to venture out. Over 1,000 artworks from the Spier Arts Trust sprawl across the estate in rooms, restaurants and gardens. Provided you haven't enjoyed your minibar too thoroughly, you can hop on a Segway for a vineyard tour or join Farmer Angus and his chickens. The real magic is tasting that 'farm-fresh' difference. The pasteis de nata are the best I've had in South Africa, a claim I verified through daily samples. Eggs are indeed a popular choice on the breakfast a la carte menu, though you can help yourself to pastries, cured ham, smoked salmon and fruit from the harvest table. Eat (and drink) your way around the farm Other dining options include dinner at the spacious Veld with an open kitchen and massive artworks adorning the walls (senior wine educator Tyson Meyi is on hand with a warm smile and a pairing recommendation), or go for something more casual at Vadas Smokehouse and Bakery. There's also Bubbles and Braai or the Picnickery, where you can pre-order your basket before choosing a lakeside spot to set up your supplied blankets and backrests. I'm on the side of 30 where birdwatching is a thing, so I admired the purple herons and malachite sunbirds flitting around. A full day of farm exploring is best ended with a glass of Spier's 21 Gables Chenin Blanc, enjoyed around the fire pit on the rooftop bar with a gorgeous view of the sunset tinting the Helderberg mountains. If you're inclined, a bougie celebration can be organised in the Manor House, where Chef Hennie will come up with a special menu for your nearest and dearest in the original farmhouse buildings. Using the ground for good Feeling like a veritable Anne of Green (21?) Gables, I wandered around the apothecary garden with Dr Caren Hauptfleisch, the resident phytotherapist and then experienced the benefits of the homegrown herbs during Spier's signature Cape Herbal Bathhouse treatment, which involved becoming a human teabag. I was exfoliated on a heated marble slab, wrapped in linen for a herbal soak, and then massaged from head to toe. Spier's regenerative practices go beyond buzzwords: their water is 100% recycled and they send zero waste to landfill. Exploring the farm gives insights into these practices, even down to a free-choice mineral lick available to the cattle (not you… you get a custard tart instead). The livestock are also frequently moved to assist with carbon sequestration, and if you have no idea what that is, Angus will be so glad you asked. Spier's long-term community commitment is also evidenced in its Growing For Good initiatives, like projects to reduce youth unemployment and boost entrepreneur development, as well as Living Soils, dedicated to producing a new generation of regenerative farmers and Tree-preneurs, where community members learn how to grow trees from seeds which are then traded for vouchers for essential items. Long story short: your stay helps these projects thrive. Cheers to that. Child-friendly fun means more grown-up time If you've got kids, you're in for a treat. There's an Elemental Garden, open to all visitors, where play means hiding in the reeds, skidding down stone slides, and clambering rope bridges. Hotel guests with children get the perks of the Buzz Club, a programme with multiple daily activities centred around nature, like building bug hotels, making flower crowns, petal perfumes, painting and baking. And their parents get to enjoy everything else, like the heated pool. If your last visit to Spier was a few years back or involved a conferencing lanyard, it's about time you paid them a visit. Bring the family, stay a week and use Spier as a base to explore the Winelands and Cape Town. That is, if you can bear to leave the farm.
Times
19-05-2025
- Times
A succulent masterpiece at Chelsea Flower Show
The last thing you might expect to see at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a family of South African quiver trees standing high over an escarpment of ancient stone and surrounded by very English show gardens — filled with fragrant tea roses, giant allium heads and sunset-hued bearded irises. This is the offering of the Newt in Somerset as it marks its last year as the flower show's headline sponsor. The gardening teams from both the hotel's Bruton estate and its South African sister hotel, Babylonstoren, have come together to bid the world-famous event a dramatic farewell. The Karoo Succulent Garden pays homage to the South African roots of the Newt's owners, the tech billionaire Koos Bekker and his wife, the former magazine editor Karen Roos, and its connection to the majestic Western Cape landscape that surrounds Babylonstoren. This was their first hotel — they now have six in their boutique group, including outposts in Amsterdam and Tuscany — which they opened in 2010 after buying and restoring an old farm and 17th-century Dutch Cape house located in the Franschhoek area of the Cape Winelands, an hour's drive from Cape Town. • Chelsea Flower Show 2025: 23 gardens to look out for For inspiration for the triangular 45 x 15m Chelsea garden, the Newt's estate architect Katie Lewis has taken cues not only from Babylonstoren's topography, but also from the nearby semi-desert eco region of Karoo. Here, many of the country's most beautiful and resilient succulents thrive against the odds of heat, drought and wind. Lewis has filled the garden with 'vignettes' of everything she saw while visiting the Karoo last summer, guided by the master botanists at Babylonstoren, Ernst van Jaarsveld and Cornell Beukes. Six biomes have been sculpted at different heights in layers of sandstone, shale and quartz to replicate the rocks the South African succulents nestle among. 'It all starts with stone since stone begets soil,' says Van Jaarsveld, a renowned ornamental horticulturist who joined Babylonstoren after four decades of curating the Botanical Society Conservatory at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town. There are the 6,000 plants, including rare specimens from 15 plant families, found across the Cape Floral Kingdom region. A long winding path runs through the middle of the garden, 'like a dry riverbed,' Lewis says, allowing visitors to get closer to these otherworldly species. Elegant fan aloes and bushveld candelabras jostle alongside the 6ft-plus quiver trees (so named because the local Khoi and San people hollowed out the side branches to carry their quivers). 'I don't think the majority of people will know they are a succulent, not a tree,' Lewis says. There will be varieties of fragrant pelargoniums and an abundance of what Van Jaarsveld calls his favourite cliff 'huggers, hangers and squatters' (that is, succulents that either hug the cliff, hang from their stems or squat between the rocks). On lower levels, gem-like succulents in peculiar shapes such as horse's teeth, baby's toes and bunny heads sit on a shimmery bed of quartz. Meanwhile, handmade pots filled with eccentrically named succulents (spirals of slime lily and frizzle dizzle, cathedral window and fairy washboard haworthias, ox tongue and warty gasterias) hang from two faux quiver trees to show just how easy — and delightfully decorative — succulents can be to grow at home. • Ask Alan Titchmarsh: readers' questions ahead of Chelsea Flower Show 'People will recognise some of the succulents from ones they possibly grew on a windowsill when they were kids — like mother-in-law's tongue with its blade-like leaves, the yellow-flowered pickle plant and the lithops that camouflage themselves like small stones to avoid being eaten in the wild — and then there are ones that are fairytale weird,' says Lewis. 'Gorgeous but strange.' Many have been grown at the Newt or in nurseries around the UK and a couple were sourced from Italy. But the quiver trees were tenderly and protectively wrapped by Van Jaarsveld and Beukes before being flown by plane in the cargo hold from Babylonstoren to London. 'We just couldn't get them of that size and number locally,' Lewis explains. To see these fascinating plants in the heart of leafy Chelsea is one thing, but to experience them up close in the Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden was something else entirely. I visited in early February at the tail end of a long, hot, dry summer. Here we could see first hand what Van Jaarsveld calls plants 'shaped by suffering'. In South Africa's unforgiving arid climate, these plants have found ways to survive. 'Some have chemicals in their spines to ward off animals, others like euphorbia have toxins that sting and burn the eyes and throat, and others turn adversity to good use,' he explains. 'Instead of the plant dying, it goes into a kind of depression and then starts growing again.' That's why, he says, 'succulents make such wonderful house plants, because they're difficult to kill … except if you water them too much with kindness.' On walks, Van Jaarsveld and Beukes would point out white-spotted zebra wart succulents and pencil cactus euphorbia winding its samphire-like tendrils through water-hardy fynbos shrubs. The region's indigenous Cape speckled aloes (aloe microstigma) were all neatly tied up in parcels, their octopus-like leaves protecting the inner crowns from the heat, radiant in shades of blush pink and rusty red. 'In the summertime the aloes put a block on photosynthesis by producing the pigment that turns them into these beautiful colours,' Van Jaarsveld explains. 'For other succulents, like paper rose haworthias (a species identified by the 18th-century British botanist and entomologist Adrian Haworth), their dead leaves form a cover like a dress to protect the inner skin from both heat and hungry animals.' We looked out for the unusual local fauna such as rock rabbits (a bit like chubby guinea pigs), desert chameleons, spotted eagle owls and shrub robins. Delicate aster daisies grow wildly in the rock crevices and we marvelled at the fat, fleshy stems of butterbushes, so named because 'you can easily cut them up'. The red-edged pig's ear — also on show at Chelsea — is intriguing too. The juice from its leaves is useful for soothing mouth ulcers and insect bites, and even helps to remove warts. It is a magnet for songbirds seeking out the nectar in its brightly coloured tubular flowers in the autumn. Back at Babylonstoren, Van Jaarsveld and Beukes play 'father, mother and doctor, and sometimes fun uncle' to the tens of thousands of succulents in hand-coiled pots, made by the local artist Nico van Wyk, that line every surface and shelf in the estate's purpose-built succulent house. 'If they're sick we have to find a solution to make them happy again,' Beukes says. Tiny gecko lizards dart around the plants, encouraged by Van Jaarsveld as a natural form of pest control against the tiger moths whose eggs do irreparable damage when laid in the succulents. • Read more luxury reviews, advice and insights from our experts The botanists make an entertaining duo, especially Van Jaarsveld whose pockets are always full of seeds and cuttings as he walks around the estate in his hiking boots and floppy hat. Together, on adventures searching for new and interesting succulents in Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe, they've fallen off cliffs and been bitten by snakes, but they have never been deterred. 'I was always interested in nature, growing succulents and aloes as a young man,' Van Jaarsveld says. 'If you love growing things, you will remain a plantsman all your life.' The Newt's Chelsea garden is timely, not only because succulents are increasingly popular for indoor gardening, but also in light of the urgent need to start bringing more drought-resistant plants into our homes and gardens, given a recent climate change study that revealed that London could feel as hot as Barcelona by 2050. Other gardens at this year's show designed by Tom Massey, Nigel Dunnett, Matthew Butler and Josh Parker are following a similar theme of raising awareness of waterwise plants and endangered species. After the show, the succulents will be relocated to the Newt to go on show in its winter garden. 'We want to champion the idea that there's a succulent for every situation,' Lewis says. 'It's about seeing something that's very common but evoked in its natural setting, as well as seeing something really unusual that you've never seen before.' She hopes, most of all, when someone stands in the centre of the Chelsea garden, 'that they will transported a little to the beauty of the South African landscape'. Van Jaarsveld adds, 'I know in Britain the rainfall is completely different, the vegetation is different, but I hope our garden will inspire people to learn more about how these small, tenacious succulents have learnt to survive and thrive.' And maybe we might take away a few life lessons in how to be a little more resilient in these uncertain times. The Karoo Succulent Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is open to RHS members from May 20-21, and the public from May 22-24. For more information and tickets, visit or
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Newt sources 6,000 plants for Chelsea Flower Show exhibit
ONE of the exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show 2025 features a Somerset connection and 6,000 rare succulent plants. The Newt in Somerset is a headline sponsor for the show, which takes place from 20 to 24 May with up to 168,000 visitors. For this year's exhibit, 6,000 rare succulent plants have been sourced from South Africa's Karoo Region by the Newt in Somerset and its sister estate, Babylonstoren. READ MORE: Monty Don prepares to unveil dog-friendly garden at Chelsea Flower Show READ MORE: Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal Winner owns Taunton florist It's a mammoth task and a first in the show's history. But it also features a deeper underlying message about the importance of conserving drought-resistant plants in the face of climate change. Thousands of rare plants will be featured in the Newt's 45 metres by 15 metres exhibit area, showcasing the indigenous succulents in a semi-desert landscape among rock formations. The garden is divided into six distinct vignettes, including a 'quiver tree forest' on a shale hill, a collection of succulent bulbs, shimmering quartz fields dotted with small, gem-like succulents, and the famous butter bush alongside fan aloes. The Newt's proposed exhibit at Chelsea Flower Show 2025 (Image: The Newt) Visitors will learn about the relationship between varying rock types and how these waterwise succulents have adapted to thrive. The garden also explores the harsh conditions of the Karoo's micro-climate. A spokesperson for The Newt said: 'The heart of South Africa is immense and mercilessly dry and as the world faces the impact of climate change, we can learn from these small, tenacious succulents, which survive in harsh conditions.' 'Resilient, adaptable, easy to grow and good for indoor air quality, these unique specimens are an appealing choice for urban gardeners. After the show, the garden will be relocated at The Newt in Somerset.' Other exhibits at Chelsea Flower Show this year include a partnership between BBC Radio 2 and Monty Don to create a dog-friendly space. It will be Monty Don's first garden at the event.
Irish Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Why the bat flies at night
Once upon a time in the forest of South Sudan, there lived a bush rat (Karoo). Karoo was a very good friend to the bat (Emiong). Karoo and Emiong always lived together and ate together. They mostly ate a bowl of nice soup every night. Emiong was a bit of a prankster. He was also a bit jealous of the bush rat's long tail. Emiong was waiting for a chance to play a trick on Karoo. One day, while having lunch Karoo mentioned that Emiong's soup was the best he had ever tasted. He asked Emiong, 'Why is your soup so yummy?' Emiong replied, 'There is a secret ingredient. Come home in the evening and I will show you.' That evening when Karoo went to Emiong's house, Emiong readily told him that the secret ingredient in his soup was that he himself would jump into the soup when it was boiling for two seconds and then jump out. To make the bush rat believe him, Emiong jumped into a soup pot for two seconds and jumped back. What Karoo did not realise was that the water was cold. READ MORE Now, Karoo really wanted his soup also to be as tasty as Emiong's. He brought his soup to boil. Karoo was also a cautious bush rat, he decided to test the waters a bit before he jumped right in. He put his right paw into the soup. His paw got burnt a lot. He took out his paw immediately. Karoo was very angry. He bandaged his injured paw and went straight to Samba (the lion). Samba, being the king of the forest, his job was to deliver justice. When Samba heard what had happened, he got angry and said the bat had to be imprisoned. Emiong realised that he had made a mistake, but he liked his freedom and so he and his family decided to hide in the bushes. He only came out during the night when no one was around. This is why the bat flies at night. Fighting Words is working with World Vision Ireland to support creative writing activities with children in Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This long-term partnership – funded by Irish Aid – is part of a broader five-year programme that World Vision is leading to empower and protect children and women. These creative education opportunities can strengthen children's resiliency, build their confidence and contribute to the bigger objective of protecting children from violence.
The South African
28-04-2025
- The South African
Five small towns in SA to visit when you need to escape the city
Sometimes the city noise gets too loud, and you just need space to breathe. South Africa is packed with small towns where time slows down, views stretch forever, and the only traffic is a few sheep crossing the road. Here are five small towns worth escaping to… Nestled against the Drakensberg foothills, Wakkerstroom is a paradise for birdwatchers with over 370 bird species, many of them rare. This small town has a laid-back charm, with friendly pubs, art galleries, and country markets. Whether you're cycling through the rolling farmland or walking around the wetlands, it's pure relaxation. Take a look here: #Wakkerstroom South Africa's McGregor sits at the end of a road that leads nowhere – literally. That dead-end feel has preserved its timeless quality. Expect whitewashed cottages, bougainvillea-filled gardens, yoga retreats, meditation centres, and small wine farms. It's made for slowing down. Take a look here: #McGregorVillage Richmond is a true Karoo oddity – a desert town obsessed with books. This small town is home to the annual BookBedonnerd literary festival and dozens of bookshops in old Karoo houses. With its wide streets, dramatic sunsets, and deep silences, Richmond feels like a scene from a Western movie. Take a look here: #RichmondKaroo Chrissiesmeer sits among hundreds of lakes and pans, attracting flocks of flamingos, storks, and cranes during the rainy season. It's quiet and untouched, with dirt roads, old farmhouses, and stunning sunsets reflected on the water. Bring a bike to this small town or just wander the open landscapes. Take a look here: #Chrissiesmeer Set against the Kasteelberg mountain, Riebeek-Kasteel is full of character – old Victorian houses, olive farms, small-batch wine estates, and eclectic art galleries. It's perfect for slow food, lazy afternoons, and browsing weekend markets. Take a look here: #RiebeekKasteel Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
