When you meet Amelia van Zyl of Stellenbosch, you soon realise that for her, doing something by halves is simply not an option. And so it was with her vegetable garden at the house when she, her pastor husband Jan and their children, Lisa (17), Janneke (15) and Francois (13) moved in, in December 2012.

The neglected patch of land was overgrown in places, and in other places completely barren. ‘Before the house became a manse, the previous owners had lived here for 40 years and their big dogs had destroyed the garden. The property was sorely neglected – I had to do something about it right away!’ she recalls. Amelia believes that one should work with what you have, even though her teenage son Francois once told her: ‘Mom, I know that we work with what we have, but can’t we please just this once go and buy something?’ But that’s how Amelia navigates life – and she does it very well too!

Because she likes to share with others, she decided to create a big vegetable and herb garden. ‘I did my research, paged through many books and visited other vegetable and herb gardens. I also consulted a friend who is a good designer and sketched the garden to scale on graph paper. My original idea didn’t fit the available space and we had to adapt. But after everything fell nicely into place, I measured out the beds, marking the outline for them with flour to see if the balance and structure was right.’ And then it was time to get cracking…

The garden takes shape

A bulldozer was needed to level the slopes and to pull up some of the palms. When the preparation was finished, low walls were built with concrete blocks to create raised beds; Amelia did this because a vegetable and herb garden is seasonal and can sometimes look a bit bare.

Permanent structures such as raised beds help the garden to look its best year-round. The walls were finished off with plaster. These types of raised beds are not necessarily the cheapest option, but alternatives made from wooden poles, pallets or crates have a shorter life span. ‘The paths between the beds were made from second-hand concrete pavers and I sprinkled bark in-between to finish them off. Without my two assistants, Clever Makoromoko and Brian Mazorodze, I wouldn’t have been able to do all this – they did a really good job!’

Words: Marie Esterhuyse, Home magazine Images: Francois Oberholster, Home magazine