The Company’s Garden

This guide to the Company's Garden in Cape Town starts with an unlikely animal: American grey squirrels imported by Cecil Rhodes around 1900 to make his corner of the city feel more English. You'll hear how they escaped his estate, multiplied faster than expected, and were declared vermin within a generation, and how the garden itself began in 1652 as a vegetable plot planted to keep passing sailors from scurvy. Look for South Africa's oldest cultivated pear tree, still standing from that first planting season.