Some time in the mid 20th century the Dutch/South African landscape artist Gabriel de Jongh painted several landscapes of a typical Cape farmhouse – whitewashed, thatched and gabled – in the foothills of the always-blue Franschhoek mountains. In the manner of Dutch settlers’ straightforward naming of places and things, the paintings are titled Western Cape Mountain Landscape with Farmhouse, Landscape with Cape Dutch Farmhouse and, simply, Landscape with Farmhouse. The bucolic scenes have the same slightly twee feel of some late-19th-century British seaside paintings – a bit unreal; a sentimental interpretation by the artist of a place that never quite existed. And yet, some 100 years later, one might hold up De Jongh’s paintings like transparencies and see through them the same unchanged scenes, reproduced almost perfectly at Sterrekopje Farm. ‘I really wanted to work with what was there,’ says Dutch businesswoman Nicole Boekhoorn, who bought Sterrekopje (which roughly translates as ‘Hill of Stars’) in 2019. ‘So we didn’t initially build anything new except the chicken coop and the pigsty.’
When Nicole first viewed the farm, it had been owned by only two families since the late 17th century. Once producing wine and olives, the 50 acres of farmland was in poor condition, but for Nicole, who had spent the past few years searching for a place where she could create a specific type of sanctuary, something about the old farmhouse and neglected groves struck her in the way one might recognise an old friend. Discovering the farm was just one of a series of serendipitous coincidences in the founding of Sterrekopje: on a flight to the continent, she’d met Fleur Huijskens, a fellow Dutch businesswoman; a day after having found the farm, she ran into Fleur again by chance. With abandon, the new couple decided to embark on a long-term project to revitalise the farm and turn it into a ‘playground’ where curiosity could be given free rein. ‘I am always interested in how people describe Sterrekopje,’ says Nicole. ‘I would call it a soulful place, an example of a way of living.’
Since acquiring Sterrekopje, Nicole and Fleur have created a farmstead centred around a garden of native species cultivated by award-winning landscaper Leon Kluge (who has twice been awarded gold medals for his South African gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show). Other additions, housed in renovated outbuildings, include an atelier for painting and clay turning, a magnificent hammam – all marble tubs, blue tiles and striped linen – and, more recently, an apothecary and yurt.
These quirky additions may seem incongruous to the location, but in some respects echo the influence of early trade at the Cape when cultural cross-pollination established an eclectic metropole, produced a particularly beautiful type of vernacular architecture and introduced the world to the Cape Floral Kingdom.
Inside the dim kitchen of the 17th-century farmhouse hang drying bunches of indigenous fynbos strung from hand-constructed wooden racks; lavender, hydrangeas, everlasting and tufted grasses pruned from the garden are stacked in baskets and buckets on the original patterned brickwork. On the shelves are glass jars of marjoram, bergamot, oat straw and hibiscus. This is the new apothecary, where Sterrekopje’s abundant plants are distilled into scented oils – Nicole and Fleur collaborated with perfumer Agata Karolina of House of Gozdawa on the scent – as well as herbal teas, bath products and tinctures.
Working with interior designer Gregory Mellor, the couple papered the walls with early botanical prints sourced from books collected locally. This artistic tradition dates to 1624, when Justus Heumius sketched flora later printed as woodcuts in Johannes Bodaeus van Stapel’s 1644 tome Theophrasti Eresii De Historia Plantarum. Later, Arabella Roupell, an English flower painter and anonymous author of the 1849 volume Specimens of the Flora of South Africa by a Lady, was published to much acclaim. When Roupell returned to England in the late 19th century, a vast collection of her plates was left behind and only rediscovered in the mid twentieth century. These stories are somewhat incidental, but give a sense of historical continuation to the space, and the act of sourcing the prints reproduces the spirit behind early plant collecting and identification that has, centuries later, allowed the couple to create a wholly indigenous garden.
The yurt was another serendipitous story: ‘We showed a close friend of ours around the farm and told her we really wanted to create a yurt,’ says Fleur. ‘And she said, “Oh, a friend of mine makes yurts and he just made a very small one for me.”’ In keeping with the cosmopolitan drift of the project, the man who made the yurt turned out to be a South African working as a boat-maker in Malaysia. He’d returned to South Africa during Covid and was stranded; the yurt project arrived at just the right time.
Constructed to the exact specifications of a Mongolian yurt – a vast tasselled canvas covers a wooden trellis, the entrance facing east – the interiors are a riot of red. Kelims, carved tables, woven baskets, embroidered cushions, brassware, jewelled teapots and traditional hide-covered instruments picked up by Nicole and Fleur on their travels fill the space, though their collecting is never quite done. Of this type of work, the Danish author Karen Blixen, who herself once famously had a farm in Africa, wrote, ‘When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.’ As Sterrekopje was created by two women with no lack of imagination, however, it may remain a constant work-in-progress.
‘The idea for Sterrekopje is to reweave our connection to ourselves, nature and each other,’ says Nicole, echoing Olive Schreiner, another woman who lived on a South African farm and dreamed up a different way of living. ‘We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling,’ wrote Schreiner, ‘that we have never seen the world.’ At Sterrekopje, the world – from Africa to Europe to Asia – has been assembled for anyone curious enough to explore it.
Sterrekopje offers 11 unique sanctuaries/rooms for short and long stays, as well as various creative retreats throughout the year. For more information, visit: www.sterrekopje.com
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