Whether he’s designing a visionary garden for a homeowner or creating a gorgeous interior display or floral arrangement, plantsman and gardener Dané Erwee’s distinctive aesthetic combines boldness with beauty.
For as long as Dané Erwee can remember, his life has revolved around plants. In fact, his relationship with them predates his own memories: there’s a family story of Dané’s mother taking him out on the farm dam in a small boat when he was a baby, and packing the waterblommetjies (Aponogeton distachyos flowers) she was harvesting from the water around him as he slept. Dané’s first conscious recollection of planting something dates back to when he was “about five or six years old”, when his grandmother gave him some clivia seeds. He planted them, “and they grew” to his great delight.
Growing up on a thriving vegetable farm means that horticulture has always been an integral part of his life. From being a youngster who helped with the to a young man studying landscape design (in the mid-1990s, at what is now the Cape Peninsula University of Technology), his goal was quite clear.
Dané emerged as one half of the game-changing floristry duo, OKASIE, in Stellenbosch during the early 2000s. With his partner, Chris Willemse, Dané created a signature style that permanently shifted the way celebratory flowers are seen.
To ensure that they had the flora they needed to assemble their distinctively dramatic floral arrangements, Dané and Chris acquired a property in Johannesdal – just outside Stellenbosch – on which they could “plant for the vase”, says Dané. As a result, the duo’s “home garden” is more like a flower farm; it’s the place where the armfuls of David Austin roses, long-stemmed hydrangea blooms, and crab-apple and plum-blossom branches that are needed for their work come from. While this means they don’t really have their own domestic garden as such, Dané has of course always been interested in designing grand home gardens, and regularly designs these for his landscaping clients.
Among the firm’s latest projects is the development of the gardens at Johannesdal 1207. A luxe property located in Pniel, just on the Franschhoek side of the famously lovely Helshoogte pass, 1207 combines multiple indoor event spaces with boutique accommodation, as well as featuring a variety of beautiful outdoor venues.
Here, Dané says, the challenge is to create an ultra-romantic and luxurious garden setting – and also to do so for the long-term using the native bulbs, fynbos plants and a variety of local grasses which have piqued his interest. Planted in harmonious combination with the property’s existing fruit trees, which includes plums, kumquats and pomegranates, the trees reflect the history of this particular place too: That has been a fruit-farming area since the mid-1700s.
“This was a fruit farm, and we must keep true to that,” says Dané, adding that his current plan is to continue to create a very layered design on the property. His vision is to retaining existing fig trees, for example, and underplant them with raspberries – later on he’ll add some indigenous botanicals, such as a selection of South Africa’s increasingly well-known buchu plants (Agathosma spp), a number of which have been used to make local teas and other medicinal infusions for thousands of years.
The gardens at Johannesdal 1207 will, as time goes by, become a judicious mix of indigenous flora within an English-style planting scheme. It will be “like a sort of herbaceous border”, says Dané, who’s intrigued by the possibilities of combining the plants of the world-renowned Cape Floral Kingdom with the grass species that are more readily associated with the rest of Africa. In effect, what he is suggesting is a massed planting design somewhat in the style of Dutch master gardener Piet Oudolf, but using a unique mix of local species. Dané says, “I’ve been thinking about white klip dagga (Leonotis nepetifolia), which flowers twice a year, with the soft yellow flowers of carnival bush (Ochna serrulata). Or perhaps, a ‘frame’ of confetti bush (Coleonema calycinum) that you fill in with other indigenous plants.”
As with design, both landscaping and floristry are about setting a mood, and Dané’s preference remains with the rambling, the overgrown and the romantic. And of course, there has to be an ongoing focus on planting for summer. After all, that’s the season when so many of the weddings that take place here will be celebrated. He’s exploring the possibilities of cosmos, poppies and nicotianas – and any and every plant that facilitates the creation of very modern floristry in the tradition of English designer Constance Spry. Her graphic “stem and flower” style remains a key influence on Chris and Dané’s work: Their creations show off every physical element of a plant, from flowers to seeds, leaves and stems. Bold and unusual blooms are of particular interest to Dané at the moment too. From the huge white and purple flowers of Strelitzia nicolai to the delicately strange, shell-like blooms of the ever-popular Monstera deliciosa, he’s ready to work with a variety.
Whether he is crafting a bold floral arrangement or creating a new garden, it’s all about “finding the right plant combinations”, Dané says, in order to create new visions of beauty.
johannesdal.co.za, okasie.co.za
Photos: Greg Cox/Bureaux. Production Sven Alberding. Text Robyn Alexander/Bureaux
