Beautiful Small Front Gardens (Garden Design)

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Walking tour of Franschhoek gardens

Hello and welcome back to Mark’s House and Garden UK. I’m having a little holiday in a town called Franchchuk near Cape Town. And one thing they’re very good at in Franchel is small, beautiful front gardens. So I thought I’d give you a guided tour of some wonderful small front gardens in Franchuk. Now my friends Wendy and John own a house in Franchuk, which means I’m very lucky because I can get to stay here for free. So what better place to start than their small front garden which runs alongside the outside of their house here. It’s a kind of a gravel garden with succulents and spiky plants. And as you can see, there’s a beautiful agave there. Moving along and it just borders the pavement here outside the front of their house. They have some quite extremes of weather here. They have temperatures down to minus three, but also incredibly hot days and also very wet and very dry days. So this is a typical garden in Franchuk and it’s a great garden to sort of lock and leave. And not far along the road at this neighboring property, they have this beautiful formal trimmed hedge. Isn’t that wonderful? And look at the way this grape vine grows out of it. Goes away along the pergler there. I do like that. It’s like box, but it isn’t box. It’s a different type of plant. It’s a boxwood. And they’ve got some lovely planters outside as well. Isn’t that lovely though? The lines that gives. Now, one thing I have noticed on my travels around French is you do see a lot of these traditional old-fashioned style rose gardens, tiny little neat hedges and roses matched up with other white flowers. And the more I see of these, the more it makes me think that I must have a rose garden when I get back home. And here outside of the house they call squeaky gate cottage they’ve taken the idea of a rose garden to another level. Lots of different types and colors of roses. Bergenillia panzes down the front border. Stralitzia bird of paradise and the wonderful grape vine across the top there. Look at the color of that rose there. I don’t know. Would you call that? Mauve. Very light purple, faded purple, dark pink. I don’t know what to call that, but that is a lovely rose garden. Now, just to give you a little bit of context, Franchoke is surrounded by a mountain range. You can probably see it around the rooftops here, all the way around the back, and that brings lots of water down into the valley. Anyway, look at the size of this tree here. Absolutely enormous. There’s a name for that tree and I will find it out and put it on the screen, but the diameter of the trunk is probably around 12 feet. And look here, this beautiful front garden. Lovely little hedges, immaculate borders with repeat planting here of these spiky little plants and some topized shrubs. Quite beautiful. You can have a completely different type of planting in this climate. And I’ll just wander off into the road and show you these grasses which stretch all the way along the side of this property and are really given a boost by the white wall behind them. They’re absolutely exquisite. Look at that. Wonderful. More roses here in this small front garden and this border and the Italian cyprus there. But look, look inside this gate tucked away in the corner over there. An old Morris miner. Wonderful. Whilst passing, just wanted to bring your attention this lovely thatched roof. Isn’t that beautiful? Look at that there. Amazing. Right, just across the road. Not so much a small beautiful front garden. In fact, just the opposite. Quite a large front garden. But talking about rain coming down off those mountains. Look here. How they’ve had to create a gully all the way through their garden to take off the rainwater and take it down there away from the house. Now, I know for a fact that last year this whole area was flooded. water came all the way through here. And that’s a new feature that they’ve put in to help keep the water out of their beautiful property. A beautiful little front garden here. Look at the color of the paintwork. They’ve even got a mobile dog grooming service to match the window frames. And look at this water running down the street here. If you saw that in England, you’d think there was a burst pipe up the road somewhere. But this is happening all the time, except in times of severe drought. That is water which is flowing from the aquifers in the mountains and it comes down here all day and all night through the town. And I think the reason it’s there is because certain farmers who have farmland at the bottom have a right to that water to irrigate their plantations. So it’s got to be left in place. It has to flow. But in severe times it stops. In severe times of drought it stops and it’s illegal to use water from the tap unless you have your own. bore hole. So, you’ll see these signs. We use bore hole water, which means they’re allowed to water their gardens in severe droughts when this has dried up. Now, this is a place where you turn around a corner and you find another beautiful surprise. Firstly, look at this beautiful property. But look at the garden. Lots of white roses and standard roses. I think that is known as a traveler palm. that plant over there in the distance. A neat path going through the center. And then as we walk along, we see erns, shutters on the windows. And there in the corner, a bird of paradise. Look how big that is. And look at the number of blooms on it. Wonderful. A gorgeous garden that one. Behind this somewhat forboding railing, I found an exquisite little garden. Keep using the word exquisite. They’re all exquisite. Little square hedge and lime green. A lime plant in a big pot. Some salvas. And then that pattern is repeated here. Square hedge, lime plant, salvia. And that is a fig one in the end. A fig plant in the end of that one. And then just down there all around the outside is a box hedge books of sampirons. It looks like they may have had box blight there sadly. All interplanted with agapanthus. Yes. Wonderful. And you’ve got the ver there so you can sit under there in either the sun or the rain and enjoy your garden. Now, I’m starting this little look from across the road because I want to give you an idea of the symmetry of this garden about the front of the house. And now I will walk over and approach because I do want to bring your attention to these little cubes of hedging. Look, one, two, three. The tops precision cut at the same level. Another cube or square or rectangle table of hedge there with all these trees growing out. I think those are those plain trees with the interesting colored barks. Wonderful shade. And they emerge from the top of this tabletop of planting. Some rosemary around the base. More agapanthas. Wonderful. Now, just next door to that one, we have a plot here that hasn’t really been given a lot of attention. But when you see all the things that you do see in Frank, it gives you lots of inspiration. Then you start to imagine what you might do with an empty space like this. It’s got structure already. Got pillars with grape vines. And then you’ve got a blank canvas. What would you do with that? I know what I’d like to do. An impressive gate to a private residence. Look at this. All the way along the side of the road here, these beautiful pale blue flowers. I hope the camera is picking up that color all the way along there. And of course, there is the water supply coming off the mountains from the aquifers. Now, I’ve been coming to Franchoke for most of my adult life, and I’m very fortunate because my better half works in the airlines, so I can get down here quite cheaply. And I just love wandering the streets, looking at the gardens. Look at this. It’s just the the ordered way they’ve put pots, all identical. And then a lovely border lined with a type of hedge that looks like books, but I know isn’t boxes. It’s got a different shape leaf. If I get in close, you can see there probably survives better in this climate. These look like salvas. All the same color going all the way along. And very often a white wall at the back just to make it pop. Something else here reminiscent of your typical English country cottage garden. Lavenders, roses, but then agapanthas down there. And I think that’s some kind of is it euphoria? That lovely wispy floaty flower there dances around and roses of course and the colonial style ver. Now this coming down the road here is the wine tram. You can jump on that and you can visit a dozen different wineries in a day. Imagine what you’d feel like when you got back. Probably slightly inebriated. Anyway, let’s have a look at this garden. Look at those lovely gates and those lovely round trimmed shrubs there. Now, I can’t see inside because the wall is too high, but what I can show you is the fact that they’ve used olive trees there to great effect. Those are olive trees and they’ve strip stripped them all the way up and just kept the canopy. Wonder what I can see if I lift my camera up above the wall. I can’t see what you’re seeing now, but I will see it later on in the edit. Look at that. There is that a form of jasmine that’s been pruned into a round shrub. Now, there’s obviously some money in this town, and it hasn’t escaped my attention that probably a lot of these houses are second homes owned by very wealthy people. And of course that tells you why so many of these gardens are immaculate. Uh because they are tended to by staff. Many of these people will have gardeners and housekeepers and I make no comment about that. But it does mean that the labor is often cheap. Um, but the benefit from a visitor point of view like me is that I get to observe these wonderful gardens and take ideas away from when I get home. And as you do wander around, you kind of get a feel for the vernacular, the everpresent, the common place in this type of town. And that is uh borders with agapantis, olive trees, gravel, salvas, lots of railings and white fences and white walls. They’ve even had their own gateway design there. But absolutely beautiful beauty wherever you look. Ordered beauty. Quite wonderful. At home, I’ve got something called enol strayula or strayuli they say in America. This is enol. It’s a tree version. And you couldn’t have this in the UK, but it’s lovely. Look at the structure up there, the spikiness, and then these bare trunks coming down. And here, as we walk past this garden, you’ll see that they’ve divided it into a kind of latis of pathways with gravel squares. And in each one of those gravel squares is a different tree. Most of them olive trees, I have to say. So, it’s kind of an olive grove. I think this is a bug villia. Look at the beautiful color of that. And uh let’s just carry on around the corner and you’ll see the other side of the lattis. There we go. Looking through and up the path. I like paths in gardens. They kind of draw the eye up towards a point in the distance. And again, lots of olive trees under planted with neatly trimmed ground cover that resembles a hedge but isn’t really a hedge. Now, you do see a lot of these alarm signs around the place, and people obviously keep an eye on security, but I’ve never felt anything other than completely safe. Anyway, look at this. They’ve had a fence made out of iron which has been allowed to rust and that rust has dropped down onto the wall. Now, what do you think? I kind of quite like it. A cloud pruned prune topiary there. I kind of quite like it. Doesn’t offend my eye. It kind of gives a sort of a a faded glamour kind of feel to it. Um, one thing you can say is the garden is immaculately kept. So, I think that is probably a deliberate effect rather than something that’s happened as a consequence of using iron for railings. Wonderful. Now, this one is a very sparse minimalist front garden, but effective nevertheless. Now, I don’t know what that is, but I’m sure my friend at Great Northern Exotics, if he sees this, will be able to give me an idea. It looks like a cross between an agave and an Alo. To me, this looks like it’s probably going to be a flower head. And all the leaves have got these very sharp barbs in the pink tinge. Now, I’m visiting in April, which is their autumn. Many of the trees are turning brown and the weather is much easier to cope with. This is the high street that runs through Franchuk. I’m going to go across it and have a look at some of the small front gardens on the other side of the main road which runs through the center of Franchuk. Here’s the headquarters of the Franchuk South African Police Service. But as I’ve already mentioned, I’ve never felt anything other than completely safe in this wonderful town. Now, just wait till you see what’s in this small front garden as we approach it across the road. Look at that there. It’s a sculpture. It’s a statue. It’s a focal point. Apocalypse horse one. Let’s see if we can get the camera to focus on that so you can get a good look at it. It’s a work of art. Imagine that. Imagine having a work of art in your front garden. Here’s another work of art. These incredibly spiky plants down the front. Wow. One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Oh, look there. Aapanthther seeds. and I take some of those home and propagate there. Now, this is Franchuk Healthcare Center, essentially the doctor’s surgery. Beautiful garden there, but I wanted to bring your attention to this over here. Look at these wonderful succulents in this border down here. Again, I’m afraid I don’t know the name of it. It’s got these beautiful planes running through, some of them curvy with a purple edge. Look at that there. And look at this. You might think this trunk was dead, but new life sprouting from the top there. Do like those, but I suspect those are not hardy in the UK in my garden. Another symmetrical garden here. Possibly a guest house or a small hotel given the number of cars outside. And here’s the front gate. I wanted to bring your attention to the path. I love the way they designed this path out of cut slabs of stone. And then if I rotate the camera left and right, you can see a lawn to the left, a lawn to the right, and in the center of that lawn, a strolitia, a bird of paradise, bigger than my pampas grass at home. Beautiful path. Those look as if they’re either about to flower or have just flowered. Look at that there. It’s like a cloud. softness next to spikiness. A real juosition. Wonderful. And look at this over here. Laugh fontine boutique hotel. Part of the oyster collection. Look at that lovely hedge. Beautiful. Immaculate. Wonderful. Now, not so much a small front garden. This one we’re on the high street in French. A communal garden. Community garden. A garden given to the people of Fanchchuk outside the town hall and registry office. Again, a rose garden. Beautiful roses. The area is thick with the scent of roses. Lovely hedges, seating area, and the lovely water feature. Look at the elephants in the middle there. All very well maintained and clean. Each one of these pillars I think dedicated to the memory of somebody and again borders here with beautiful standard roses. Imagine walking out of those doors having just gotten married to this view. Wonderful. All your family gathered around applauding. Quite beautiful. Now, let’s have a quick look at a garden of sculptures outside of an art gallery. You would expect to see sculptures outside an art gallery just off the high street in Franchuk. You can come along here and buy one of these sculptures if you wish. You’d probably need a second mortgage, though. I’ve seen the prices of these and they’re not cheap. You might as well just come and enjoy them for free outside the art gallery. Here’s the water again from the aquifer running down the side of the street. And there is another one of those spectacular tree alows. Right, we’re getting to the end of this little guided tour here now. But there is another little garden just outside of Macaron, which is a guest house I wanted to show you. And here is the garden outside. Macaron elegant simplicity. A hedge a single color of plant in this case I think salvia white and gray walls behind and it just works. It’s just wonderful. And they’ve even colored the sign the same color as their signature plant. this lovely purple color. Isn’t that nice and ordered and structured? So, there you go. A short guided tour of the small but beautiful front gardens of Franchuk near Cape Town in South Africa. Hope you enjoyed that. I’ll see you soon back in the UK for some more house and garden adventures. Bye for now. [Music]