After wine, the Voyager Estate guest book’s most remarked upon feature is its gardens. The lawns, roses, traditional Cape Dutch ‘werf’ garden and imposing flag have become one of Margaret River’s most significant attractions.

Even the most humble gardeners will acknowledge that, whilst plants might grow naturally where and when they feel like it, gardens don’t happen by accident. It takes planning, knowledge, hard work and, above all, time. Imagine then, the planning, knowledge and hard work involved in a garden that requires 8 full-time gardeners to maintain it.

It was a vision from the outset that Voyager Estate would have gardens unlike anything else in the area. With the South African Cape Dutch-style as a starting point and the understanding that there would be no native plants, Marion Blackwell, then Voyager Estate’s landscape architect, set out to design gardens that would reflect the grandeur of Voyager Estate’s cellar sales building as well as be a place for pleasant meandering and relaxation.

One of the key features is the ‘werf’ garden, a once functional element of Cape farmsteads in South Africa. Werfs, pronounced ‘v-aire-f’, served several different purposes as they developed over the centuries, including being used for penning animals, growing vegetables and herbs, and being an integral part of a strategic defensive layout in the event of intruders.

Nowadays, they serve an aesthetic function. The werf’s whitewashed walls, paths, flowerbeds and trees add to the synergy that the whole of the Cape Dutch style aims to create.

Roses, too, have been associated with both Cape Dutch architecture and vineyards for hundreds of years. They can often be seen at the ends of vine rows, known for their advantage of being able to show signs of disease more quickly than vines. In addition to this, at Voyager Estate we have two rose gardens that help make up the 1600 roses planted on the Estate. They include varieties such as ‘Prospero’, ‘Victoriana’ and ‘Lavendar Pinocchio’ as well as popular names such as ‘Just Joey’ and ‘Angel Face’.