Join the festivities, says Garden Day ambassador

In the run-up to this year’s Garden Day on Sunday October 20, Stellenbosch resident and official 2024 Friend of Garden Day, Pietman Diener, shares his vast knowledge of gardening, flowers and plants with readers, encouraging them to put on a flower crown and join in on the garden festivities. Currently the head gardener at Rustenberg wine estate in Stellenbosch, Pietman reveals more about his gardening history in a Q&A.

Can you share your youngest memory of being in a garden and what role this has had on your life?

I remember my mother planting sweetpeas (although she is not really a gardener). My strongest earliest garden memory is being in my grandmother’s garden in Wittedrift. It was a large garden over 3 erven with a storybook vegetable garden, cannas, flowering daisies, purple Lantana, Lemon Verbena by the front steps, colourful Bougainvillea and Bartlettinia sordidum, a Loquat tree, a large Cecile Brunner rosebush growing by the cattle grid at the bottom of her steep driveway where we would chase down in a go-cart, rolling down her steep lawn followed by itchy baths in the tea-coloured water of the South-Coast; her characterful gardener called Toen, and smoking an early morning cigarette with him by the fire alongside the water tank.

The smell of her toolroom with spades and forks oiled, onions and pumpkins drying in the generator room. It has had the most profound impact on my career and also what I aspire to most in leading a version of a simple life.

Is there a specific person/s who has encouraged and tended your love of gardens and gardening?

My maternal grandmother. Two wonderful neighbours who encouraged me and shared my passion and interest in gardening. My fathers’ typist who would take me with her family on nursery visits, as well as the Elgin Festival. Una van der Spuy. Jenny Ferreira.

What is your preferred kind of garden and why, and which would you say is your favourite plant or flower and why?

I do love architecture in a garden, whether formal or informal. For my own personal garden I need interest in plant material and variety. I love contrasting textures, I love shapes, and I especially enjoy the effect of scale in a garden. I enjoy experiencing the seasons through a garden and for that reason employ especially perennials that grow very fast and change throughout the seasons.

I garden to cocoon myself and house in the environment as also to attract insects and birds and nature into my immediate environment and to be amazed by it.

How much time would you say you spend in your garden and would you say that this has definite health benefits?

I spend 90% of my time in the garden or outdoors. I need to make a sleeping pod in the garden so that I can spend 100% of my time there. People that I spend most of my time with say I am a little crazy, so not so sure about the health benefits.

How would you describe the emotions and feelings you experience in your garden?

Wonder. Amazement. Sheer joy and immense gratitude. Childlike sense of excitement at discovering something new in the garden. Extreme exhaustion in the heat of February!

Why is Garden Day important to you and how would you encourage people to celebrate the day?

I have been encouraging since the first Garden Day via a weekly radio talk. I experience the benefits of gardening every day and feel that everyone can have those same benefits, and Garden Day is a wonderful opportunity to share this.

Do you have a favourite community garden that you like to visit and why?

Not really a community garden, but I love visiting the Johnman Garden in Stellenbosch and enjoying this magical space.

For those people who don’t have a garden or interest in gardening, what advice would you give them to take up gardening?

Get outside in nature. Whether hiking, cycling, on the beach, anywhere. Observe nature and become intrigued by it. Sow seeds or plant something edible and usable like rosemary or parsley and experience the joy and pleasure of using it. Visit gardens and discover what type or style of garden you enjoy.

If you could tell your younger self anything about gardening what would it be?

I was a bit shy about my interest in gardens as a young boy, so I would really like to encourage anyone of a young age with a keen interest in nature or gardening to stay interested and follow your interests and to dream big!

Which would be your dream garden to visit anywhere in the world?

I always enjoy visiting Great Dixter. And I would love to visit the Garden of Ninfa and live there for a year to truly experience it. Most of all I would very much like to revisit my grandmother and her garden as a 3- or 4-year-old boy.