A garden is more than what grows in it. It is a place to spend time, gather people, grow something for the table and, increasingly, reconnect with where our food comes from.
That is the thinking behind Garden Day 2026 on Sunday, 18 October. Now in its 11th year, Garden Day's theme, From Garden to Table: Grow, Gather, Celebrate, puts the connection between growing and eating firmly at the centre of the day.
Food gardens can play a role in food security and wellbeing while also creating opportunities to learn, share skills and bring people together. And for chefs, there is something particularly satisfying about taking an ingredient from the garden and turning it into something worth gathering around a table for.
Over the years, Garden Day has brought together some of South Africa's most interesting food voices, each with their own relationship with growing, gathering and cooking.
Bertus Basson: if you plant it, eat it
For chef Bertus Basson, gardening is personal. His love of plants extends to the garden at home, where fynbos grows alongside vegetables and fruit trees. His wife’s favourite flower is the peony and he has three peony tattoos representing his wife, son and daughter.
“Our garden is a bit of a smarty box at the moment, a little all over the show,” he says.
Raised beds and old fruit bins help him make the most of the space while also keeping plants happier. There is a practical side to the garden too. He keeps his pig out of the vegetable patch and manages what he grows according to what the family can actually use. Even waste from the kitchen and restaurant has a role to play. Charcoal and ash from the restaurant fire are worked into the garden beds while hay from the chickens becomes mulch.
“I’m definitely more of a veggie grower. If you plant something, it should serve a purpose, either for beauty or to eat. For me, it’s always about eating!” His Garden Leaf Salad with Mustard Dressing is a simple expression of that philosophy. At home in Stellenbosch, the family picks fresh leaves from their garden for salad, including ingredients that don't traditionally make it onto the salad plate, such as beetroot, kale, carrot tops, nasturtium and mizuna.
“There is something special about picking fresh leaves for salad every night,” says Basson.
Garden leaf salad with mustard dressing
Ingredients
Garden leaves, including beetroot leaves, kale, carrot tops, nasturtium and mizuna
For the dressing
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 lemon, zested and juiced
50ml white wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
Method
Add all the dressing ingredients to a jar and shake vigorously until emulsified.
Toss the garden leaves with the dressing just before serving.
Chef Nti: a taste of home
Nthabiseng Nti Ramaboa, better known as Chef Nti, has built her food career around keeping South African food stories alive.
Her cooking brings together familiar flavours and ingredients with a contemporary approach and she has a particular appreciation for home-grown produce and local food producers.
Her lemongrass and ginger beer is rooted in memories of Christmas mornings and celebrations in Soweto. It is also a good example of how a few ingredients from the garden can become something that is made to be shared.
Lemongrass and ginger beer
Ingredients
625g sugar
250g fresh ginger, chopped
150g lemongrass, chopped
4 litres water
2 lemons
10g yeast
1 pineapple, cut into chunks
Method
Bring 1 litre of water to the boil and add the ginger, lemongrass and sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved.
Add the remaining water along with the lemon juice and zest and the yeast. Leave the mixture to rest for 10 to 12 hours before straining and refrigerating.
Serve chilled with fresh pineapple.
Karen Dudley: letting the garden lead
Chef and Cape Town food personality Karen Dudley has always had a knack for making vegetables feel like the main event rather than something relegated to the side of the plate.
Her Orange Fennel Salad with Pralined Almonds and Smoked Paprika is a particularly good fit for Garden Day. It brings together oranges, fennel, watercress, mint and thyme with the richness of feta and the crunch of a smoked paprika almond praline. It is colourful, fresh and full of ingredients that let the garden do much of the talking.
Orange fennel salad with pralined almonds and smoked paprika
Ingredients
6 medium oranges, using one or two Cara Cara or blood oranges if available
2 large fennel bulbs, very finely sliced
Maldon sea salt
80g soft Danish feta, gently broken into bite-sized pieces
A good handful of watercress
10g picked mint leaves
For the almond praline
80g flaked almonds
½ tsp smoked paprika
100g castor sugar
For the dressing
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp orange juice
2 tsp runny honey
Leaves from a sprig of thyme or a pinch of dried thyme
7 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp toasted cumin seeds
1 tsp smoked paprika
Method
To make the praline, prepare a baking sheet with a silicone mat or baking paper and lightly butter it. Toss the flaked almonds with the paprika.
Sprinkle the sugar over the base of a heavy-based frying pan and heat until the edges begin to caramelise and the sugar melts to a pale golden colour. Do not leave it unattended or stir it.
Immediately stir in the flaked almonds and quickly spread the praline over the prepared baking sheet as thinly and evenly as possible. Leave to cool in a dry place before breaking it into fine shards or crushing it lightly with a rolling pin.
For the dressing, whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
Slice the tops and bottoms off the oranges. Using a sharp paring knife, cut down the sides to remove the peel and pith, then slice the oranges into rounds, removing any pips.
Trim the fennel bulbs, reserving the fronds for the salad. Cut the bulbs in half and remove the core, then slice very finely. Add the sliced fennel to the dressing.
Pick through the watercress, discarding any very thick stems.
In a shallow bowl or serving platter, layer the orange with the dressed fennel, fennel fronds, mint leaves and feta. Finish with the pralined almonds and the remaining fennel and mint leaves. Sprinkle with a pinch of Maldon salt and dust with a little smoked paprika.
Luke and Jess: keeping it close to the source
Jessica Shepherd and Luke Grant of Good to Gather have built their food philosophy around sustainability, farm-to-table cooking and the kind of unfussy food that lets good ingredients do the work.
Their beetroot tarte tatin is a case in point. Beetroot is cooked until tender before being layered over caramelised butter, brown sugar and red wine vinegar, topped with puff pastry and baked until golden.
It is finished with crème fraîche and a scattering of salad leaves and edible flowers, bringing together the earthiness of the beetroot with the freshness of the garden.
Beetroot tarte tatin
Ingredients
10–12 medium beetroots
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves
Fresh thyme
Sea salt
1 cup crème fraîche
Ready-made puff pastry
Salad leaves and edible flowers, to garnish
Method
Cook the beetroot until tender, around 20 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool before peeling.
Melt the butter with the brown sugar, then add the vinegar, thyme and garlic. Halve the beetroot and arrange it in the pan.
Cover with puff pastry, cutting a small X in the centre to allow steam to escape. Bake at 200°C for 25 to 30 minutes until the pastry is golden.
Leave to rest for five minutes before carefully turning it out onto a plate. Serve with crème fraîche and finish with salad leaves and edible flowers.
Chef Ayabonga Gope: the garden in a salad
Private chef Ayabonga Gope's relationship with food starts well before the kitchen. Growing up, he would accompany a neighbour to his farm to pick fresh produce and says the experience taught him an important lesson: a garden can provide far more than ingredients. It can provide food, opportunity and a way for a community to support itself.
That belief led him to help establish a vegetable garden in his community, supplying fresh produce to restaurants and old-age homes in the Western Cape while creating jobs and feeding the community. Garden Day has previously highlighted his connection to growing and his love of picking and collecting fresh produce for his cooking.
His grapefruit and roasted carrot salad brings that garden-to-table philosophy onto the plate. Citrus, fennel, tomatoes, basil, baby carrots, feta and wild rocket come together in a colourful salad that is fresh, generous and full of ingredients that feel at home in a South African garden.
Grapefruit and roasted carrot salad
Ingredients
2 grapefruit, peeled and sliced
2 pomelo or oranges, peeled and sliced
A handful of fennel
A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 block feta, cubed
Fresh basil
Baby carrots
3 tbsp black balsamic vinegar
Ciabatta, toasted with olive oil
Wild rocket
For the dressing
¼ cup grapefruit juice
2 tbsp ginger juice
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
¼ cup olive oil
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper
Method
Roast the baby carrots at 180°C for 10 minutes. Add the honey and balsamic vinegar towards the end and roast for another three minutes.
Combine the grapefruit, pomelo or oranges, fennel, tomatoes, herbs and roasted carrots.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients and drizzle over the salad. Serve on a bed of wild rocket, topped with feta and basil and a little more dressing.
Pistachios or avocado can also be added.
From garden to table
There is no single recipe for a Garden Day meal.
It might be a beetroot tarte tatin surrounded by fresh garden leaves, a colourful salad made from whatever is ready to harvest or a cold glass of homemade ginger beer shared outside.
And that is perhaps the point. A garden-to-table meal doesn't require a huge vegetable patch or a professional kitchen. It can start with a few herbs in a pot, a handful of tomatoes, some carrots pulled from the soil or a neighbour bringing over something they have grown. The growing is part of the pleasure. So is the cooking. But when that food is shared, the garden becomes something more. It becomes a reason to gather.
Garden Day takes place on Sunday, 18 October 2026, and this year's From Garden to Table: Grow, Gather, Celebrate theme is an invitation to think about what we can grow as well as how we can enjoy it. The Garden Day website has recipes and ideas for using garden produce, along with a Grow Guide to help you get started with growing your own food. There are also celebration ideas, inspiration for garden gatherings and ways to join in whether you have a large garden, a balcony or just a few pots.
So plant something, pick something, cook something and share it. Even a small harvest can make its way from garden to table.
Find more recipes, growing inspiration and the Garden Day Grow Guide at gardenday.co.za.
You can also follow @GardenDaySA and share your own garden-to-table moments using #GardenDaySA.
