Where Gardens Dare: Prince Albert’s Desert Blooms

Once a year, the small Karoo town of Prince Albert opens its private gardens to the public - a rare invitation into a world where scarcity shapes design and every plant tells a story of survival.

Each spring, the desert town of Prince Albert reveals its most captivating secret: private gardens thriving in arid soil, where soft greens, silvers, and bursts of electric colour bloom beneath vast, open skies.  It's not simply about beauty and design - though both are abundant. What makes the Prince Albert Open Gardens weekend (4 -5 October 2025) truly compelling, is its celebration of resilience, reinvention and enduring sense of place.

Here, on the edge of the Swartberg mountains, where the average annual rainfall flirts with the 200 mm mark and the landscape is shaped by drought cycles and ancient geology, the gardens are as purposeful as they are captivating. These are spaces planted for a future with less water- a quiet rebellion rooted in deep respect for the veld’s rugged beauty and tenacious life. This is the ethos at the heart of the Open Gardens weekend.

But it’s not all succulents and prickles- it’s resilience, curated. Think pomegranate hedges against pale blue shutters, old olive groves and roses- yes, roses, blooming in the kind of dry heat that makes you realise why the lawn quietly gave up. Take a stroll down Church Street, and you might glimpse a remarkable garden verge in front of a lovingly restored hotel-turned-home: a pared-back palette of klipmalva, spanspekbos and spinnekopblom nestled among weathered rocks and gravel. Impeccably simple and unassuming at the roadside, yet undeniably unique. Rain-harvesting swales, gravel mulches, and plants propagated from ancestral stock are the order of the day; here, mulching is a way of life.

This year’s programme is blooming with inspiration. Expect guided biodiversity walks with Prof. Sue Dean, who will lead small groups through the Wolwekraal Nature Reserve and Swartberg Pass. At Renu-Karoo Nursery - equal parts plant emporium and ticket hub - she and nursery manager Bertus Fourie will guide visitors through the nursery’s remarkable collection of desert- adapted species.

For edible gardening enthusiasts, Oasis Farm offers a living classroom in companion planting, organic vegetable production and natural pest control. The ever-inspiring Kraal Garden is back, with additional highlights of the working nursery and experimental seed production area, where once-barren farmland is being transformed into a rewilding wonderland.

Kraal Garden is joined by Karoo Huis and Swartberg House to form the Karoo Garden Collective: a thoughtfully connected trio of gardens that merge into one continuous, wild landscape on the edge of the village. Together, they share a three-hectare experimental garden, threaded with walkways that weave through endemic plantings, soft grassy borders and clever ideas. Here, planting schemes lean toward the wild and immersive: it’s experimental, evocative, and unmistakably Karoo. For those wanting to linger longer, Swartberg House, home of architect Jennifer Beningfield- best known for architecture that honours place and land, also offers a special place to stay, making the experience not just one to visit, but to inhabit.

Beyond the gardens themselves, the weekend offers a series of thought- provoking talks and guided experiences. Geoff Nichols brings decades of indigenous plant wisdom to a lecture on local flora and landscaping for climate adaptation. Entomologist Connal Eardley will lead a walk-and-talk on wild bees, while Karin Sternberg delves into the secret lives of Karoo pollinators. Liana Jansen’s session on Klein Karoo medicinal plants offers a compelling look at traditional knowledge still rooted in the veld. Together, these experiences invite visitors to look deeper, not just at what grows, but how and why it thrives.

The Prince Albert Open Gardens weekend is more than an event; it’s an invitation to see gardens not only as luxury, but as legacy too. This is gardening at its most elemental- artistic, adaptive, and inseparable from its environment. Come with a notebook, questions and curiosity and leave with dusty shoes, sun-warmed skin and a heart full of Karoo stories.

For more information, click here.