Gardens (or The Gardens) is an affluent inner-city suburb of Cape Town located just to the south of the city centre located in the higher elevations of the "City Bowl" and directly beneath Table Mountain and Lion's Head. It is home to several national museums such as Iziko South African National Gallery and the Iziko South African Museum. The University of Cape Town also houses its Fine Arts department in the suburb, at Michaelis School of Fine Art. Company's Garden, South Africa's oldest garden, a public park and heritage site is a focal point of the suburb. The area is also home to the oldest synagogue in Southern Africa, the Old Shul (now occupied by the South African Jewish Museum) and its successor, the Gardens Shul, "The Mother Synagogue of South Africa."
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It is also home to the storied Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel, a luxury hotel dating back to 1899,[2] as well as the Labia Theatre, a beloved independent art house cinema.[3] The main thoroughfare is Kloof Street, known for its fashion stores, second-hand furniture stores, restaurants and art galleries.[4] It also houses Leeuwenhof estate, the official residence of the Premier of the Western Cape. It is a hub for the Cape Town creative industry, home to e.tv at Longkloof Studios and many modelling agencies, production and publishing companies and associated industries.
In the early years, the Cape was used as an anchorage for Portuguese, Dutch and British ships.
No permanent settlement existed until the Dutch East India Company issued a mandate to Jan van Riebeeck, a ship's surgeon, to establish a settlement which could provide passing ships with fruit, vegetables and fresh meat (traded from the locals).
In 1652 the first garden was laid out by Hendrik Boom, the Company's master gardener, on a site close to the Fresh River (near to the Grand Parade). Later that year, the garden crossed the Fresh River (where Adderley Street is today), and included a medicine garden. Within a few years it was 18 hectares in size.
As more produce became available from the Company's gardens at Newlands and from the Free Burghers who had settled along the Liesbeeck River, the town garden was slowly converted into a botanical and ornamental garden, although the growing of vegetables did continue for a number of years.
The famous kilometre-long Government Avenue, which runs from the top of Adderley Street, also known as 'The Gardens', was originally planted with lemon trees and in 1700 with orange trees. During the time of Simon van der Stel, it was lined with oak trees, which remain today.
The suburb is home to Southern Africa's oldest Jewish congregation. The first Jewish services in the country were held on the day preceding Yom Kippur in 1841, known as Erev Yom Kippur at Benjamin Norden's home, Helmsley Place. The Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel purchased Norden's former home in 1996 and it is now guest accommodation for the hotel.[5][6] In the early twentieth century, a Jewish primary school was established on Hope Street, United Hebrew Schools'. A purpose-built school was built at the same site in 1937, replacing the large house that had previously housed the school.[7] The school later became known as Herzlia School and relocated to its current campus in Vredehoek in the 1950s, where a high school was also established.[8]
During apartheid, Vredehoek was designated as a “whites-only” area as part of the Group Areas Act. The Gardens Centre Tower was built in the 1970s in response to a "white housing crisis" in racially segregated Cape Town. In the 1970s the National Party initiated several planning interventions, including the suspension of the city's zoning rules with regards to building height for developers willing to build housing in white Group Areas.[9] The residential tower and shopping mall replaced a large historic hotel, The International Hotel situated on Upper Mill Street. The South Africa national rugby union team (Springboks) usually stayed there when they were playing in Cape Town. The hotel also hosted bands and concerts over the weekends.[10]
Kloof Street mostly consisted of boarding houses for most of the twentieth century, many have now been converted into restaurants, cafes, boutiques and hotels.[11]
