Long before re-wilding became fashionable, landscaper Patrick Watson advocated for the use of indigenous plants and the restoration of degraded ecosystems, his creative landscaping always informed by nature and the environment. With the publication of Veld this month the Joburg-born Watson’s contribution to landscape and garden design is at last being celebrated. Evidence of years of work in the making, the book is richly illustrated, with photography by Elsa Young, illustrations by Heidi Fourie and in-depth, three-part texts by writer Garreth van Niekerk.
Featuring 23 gardens and landscapes, Veld is a beautiful tribute to an extraordinary talent who is arguably the most innovative and versatile landscape architect working in South Africa today. Watson has created hundreds of gardens in Africa, and many others beyond – ranging from extensive mega-landscapes to oasis-like home gardens and meditative spaces for quiet contemplation. An instinctive, intuitive talent, Watson refers to himself as an artist and designer here to “save the planet”. Infinitely humble, he is quick to acknowledge he works with contractors and is well connected.
Born into Joburg society where he knew the Read family (of Everard Read Gallery) as kids so when Mark Read took over the family property near Nirox one thing led to another: “I worked on it and then met Benji who owns Nirox and worked on the landscaping for Nirox”. One thing leads to another is a constant. “Douw Steyn of Steyn City was very good friends with Nelson Mandela so after working on the Saxon for Steyn I worked on his Vaalwater property in Limpopo and since he was big buddies with Mandela he introduced me to Mandela and I did Mandela’s garden landscaping too.” “I’m about to go to Cape Town to work on Patrice Motsepe’s Cape property where I am doing his garden. Another big Cape project is the Spier estate, that’s an old one.” He grows his own plants at a Midrand nursery where he gets to grow crooked trees explaining “That’s how trees grow naturally in the bush, crooked, not straight. Nurseries tend to straighten them.”
“Patrick seldom works from carefully drawn plans, instead combining artistic intuition with extensive botanical knowledge and a deep concern for the conservation and restoration of nature. His gardens are creative, unconventional, inspiring and often bold, and he uses plants along with colours and landforms to design spaces that are both visually and emotionally captivating” says van Niekerk.
Watson’s early career was in sync with an international vanguard of pioneering gardeners designing with nature to influence their thinking. Early on he opted to devote his life entirely to his keen interest in plants, drifting swiftly out of the more structured world of architecture in favour of making regular seed-collecting expeditions across southern Africa and working for one of the world’s first nurseries exclusively for indigenous plants. Still a collector Watson says “As plant collectors, we go everywhere – I still go out collecting to places like Rustenburg, Olifantspoort, Rustenpoort and what I find in the bush I transplant”. Way back in 1980, my Archaeologist father, a friend and associate of Watson’s, was once commissioned by him to excavate the Sun City site for any ancestral evidence before Kerzer broke ground at what would become The Palace of the Lost City. Respectfully acknowledging those who inhabited the land before, it was a visionary act, far ahead of its time. “It was ceramicist Dina Prinsloo who introduced me to Professor Mason who Sol Kerzer then agreed to employ to excavate the area above the city that is now Sun City back in 1980. I drove out there every week then scouting. Apparently, the excavation findings have been integrated and annotated by the architect.”
Throughout his career, Watson has had lengthy partnerships with big shots like Sol Kerzner, and insurance magnate Douw Steyn of Steyn City and the Saxon (both of which feature in the book, Steyn once called the Saxon his primary residence). The garden ‘template’ created for the Saxon provides a blueprint style for the future longstanding project Steyn City, with an emphasis on texture rather than colour in the plantings. The gardens for both present a minimalist planting palette setting the tone for relaxation.
For both sites, Watson worked with local rock to create the landscapes, making confident, big decisions with the scope and scale of his vision. For the vast Steyn City parkland development Patrick established dedicated nurseries a decade before the project even broke ground. Again, visionary – these are plants, after all, and they take time to grow, a further example of his future thinking. Since many of his projects have exceeded the scale of typical landscaping ventures and require sustained attention, he has developed ambitious, rarely seen nurseries on the islands of the Seychelles, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe where he has trained future landscapers to sustain, maintain and expand his projects to continue working with the natural environment, to regrow and to regenerate the landscapes and to craft natural ecological systems.
Veld beautifully showcases the complexity of design with nature, while also serving as a record of the knowledge, creativity and intuitive powers of a supremely gifted artist. Veld: The Gardens and Landscapes of Patrick Watson is available at all good bookstores, including Exclusive Books, and online, also on the Struik Nature website.
All images by Elsa Young
