43 years of gardening on the Kensington Koppie

“This is Robben Island and if you come this way from the Cape, you see Africa in front of you…and that’s West Africa there…”  Phillip O Pirie walks me through his extraordinary garden that extends beyond his Ferret Street property onto the famous Kensington koppie.  He has been cultivating this garden for 43 years. 

 It all began when Rita O Pirie wrote to the Town Planning Department of the Johannesburg Municipality in 1971:

“Dear Sirs,
…I am interested in purchasing or leasing the piece of ground surrounding the stand for the following reasons:

1.   To beautify the area which is in a sad state of neglect – broken glass, refuse from dumping, rusty tins, etc.

2.   As I have three young children, our grounds, which are mostly terraced, are inadequate for them to play on. They are inclined to play on the piece of ground described above.

3.   The ground situated behind the house is used by Bantu males and females for drinking parties and urinating. My husband is away for considerable periods and when requesting the abovementioned Bantus to leave they use foul language and become aggressive.

4.   We have no privacy at the rear of the house and such passing persons can see over the low wall into the house.

 The Council agreed to the encroachment provided the costs were covered: R 10.50 for the plans; revenue stamps to the value of R 2.10; and a nominal fee of R 1.00 per annum for an initial five years. 

After more than 40 years of encroachment (the law says 30 years), the property belonged to Phillip and Rita O Pirie when I  met them last year. The property was on sale at the time and they had received a good offer from a Muslim family.

O Pirie’s interest in gardening began when he was a child at Holy Cross Convent in the Transkei. He grew up there: “Let’s just say I was one of the war orphans of the time," he says.  Two nuns taught him the basics of gardening: “There was Sister Florence in the flower garden and Sister Veronica in the vegetable garden and they both had green fingers.”

Over the years gardening has helped O Pirie balance his working life. He joined the SA Police Force when the Rand Daily Mail called for English speaking cops to join up in 1956 and was based at "the old Marshall Square" from 1956 - 1966. In 1967 he met Nelson Mandela at the Drill Hall, near the Noord Street taxi rank in Joubert Park. The initial stages of the Treason Trial happened there.  

After ten years as a policeman, O Pirie started his own company in the security/investigatory field. His work has taken him to many countries and brought him into contact with dignitaries around the world. 

His clients who were initially all white became “from across the racial spectrum” and include several notorious South African millionaires. O Pirie says he has considered writing a book entitled: “The ten multi-millionaires and one billionaire.”  The billionaire is a more recent client.

O Pirie relied on cheap labour (workers were paid a standard rate of between R2.00 and R5.00 per day in the early years) and inexpensive materials (cement cost R9.50 per packet) to construct the stone walls surrounding and separating the different levels of the garden.   “Most of the labour was carried by me and blacks,” O Pirie says.” It was a question of almost having four blacks Saturdays and four blacks Sundays clearing the stand and building this colossal stone wall. I had a boy from the Northern Transvaal, Limpopo area… Hell, what a good worker that was…”

I would not get into a discussion on apartheid history with Phillip O Pirie since it is unlikely that we would find much common ground. Nevertheless, he is a modest, courteous man, sensitive to people and the natural world. It is interesting to me that although he clearly has a sense of connection to plant life, his approach to gardening is quite severe and regimented: “My style has more of a military base. I like straight lines and uniformity.  I like different colours but they must blend.” Looking up towards the koppie I can’t help thinking how untamed and unordered the terrain is and what a struggle it must have been to impose structure on it.   

The next challenge for O Pirie is his daughter’s 1.8 hectare property in Lonehill: “My daughter’s garden is not straight lines. It is more circles.  I am going to try and make it conform”, he says.