Synopsis
Created in the 1680s, with hundreds of acres of woodlands, formal gardens and arable land, it was home from 1785 to 7 generations of the Hobhouse family. In recent times it was gardened by the garden designer and writer Penelope Hobhouse, who wrote her book The Country Gardener based on her experience there, but was best known in the 1990s when the Canadian couple Sandra and Nori Pope made a garden within the walled parabola based on colour themed borders.
The estate was bought in 2013 by South African billionaire telecoms magnate Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roo. In the Cape Winelands, their much-lauded vineyard, hotel and formal garden, Babylonstoren, has become a byword for horticultural style: it is Africa’s only RHS-partnered garden.
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