February 19, 2019
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed, and every morning revealed new miracles...
"Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.”
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
I have always truly believed that there is a world of WONDER buried between the pages of books just waiting to be discovered. As a little girl one of the very first books I was ever gifted - from the man who spends all his days in that world of wonder as there is always a book under is arm no matter where he goes, my dearest dad, was a book called
The Secret Garden.
I grew up in a very humble home with a very humble garden where (as an only child) I would spend hours getting lost but discovering SO MUCH in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s,
The Secret Garden. Reading and re’reading and exploring that magical place until all the corners of every page of this enchanting book curled backwards and forwards under my eager little fingers.
How wonderful it was to then grow up and discover that the ‘Secret Garden’ really DID exist - right here in our BEAUTIFUL Western Cape. Every single time I have spent a day wandering in their exquisite gardens I somehow find myself being a nine year old little girl again ... rediscovering the magic of what it means to look at the world through eyes filled with wonder and I am reminded time after time about a beautiful quote from the book:
“In the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves - nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them...”
Babylonstoren dates back to 1692, it is an eight-acre farm and it’s garden is majestic.
Under every tree and around every little corner, in between every magnificent shade of green and amongst fields of flowers and rows of fruits and vegetables given by Mother Nature there are never ending stories waiting to be discovered.
What a delightful privilege then to go and make a memory there for our Romantic Collective Season One shoot. The heart of The Romantic Collective is all about being inspired to live a life filled with WONDER, to travel, to explore...to make memories!!
One of our ALL TIME favourite places to make a memory is BABYLONSTOREN...Every one of the more than 300 varieties of plants in the garden is edible or has medicinal value. They are also grown as organically as possible and in a biologically sustainable manner. The fruit and vegetables from the garden are harvested all year round for use in their two farm-to-fork restaurants. It is an absolute FEAST for the SENSES!! #GoMakeABabylonstorenMemory #SeedsForTheSoul #TheRomanticTraveller
