A Tale of Two Gardens: From Dutch Roots to Global Retreats

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had a simple plan: plant a vegetable garden at the Cape of Good Hope. It was just a humble patch to grow provisions for passing ships—how charmingly modest.
Who could have guessed this little garden would grow into a vast colonial empire that would shape centuries of history?

But oh, how that garden grew.

The Dutch, ever the practical gardeners, didn’t stop at vegetables.
They planted a whole system: social hierarchies as rigid as rose trellises, economic structures as invasive as kudzu, and racial classifications that spread like perfectly planned Dutch tulip fields.
The British later came along and, finding this garden so well-structured, simply added their own colonial fertilizer to the mix.

Now, in a delightful twist of historical irony, we have seen Britain perform its garden exodus – Brexit – retreating behind the hedges it once planted across the globe.
Meanwhile, America, the great inheritor of colonial gardening techniques, flirts with its own withdrawal through “Amexit”—apparently forgetting that its entire national garden was built on imported seeds and borrowed cultivation methods.

In this landscape of retreating empires, we find Elon Musk, a fascinating hybrid bloom from the colonial garden.
Part Dutch, part British, all privilege – sprouted from soil enriched by emerald mines and watered with apartheid-era advantages.
From his father’s position as an anti-apartheid politician (who conveniently owned those lucrative mines) to his own trajectory from Pretoria to PayPal, Musk embodies the complex fruits of this centuries-old garden.

The delicious irony? That original VOC garden was meant to be just a refreshment station – a pit stop for weary sailors.
Now its modern heir launches rockets to Mars and tweets about free speech from a platform he bought for $44 billion, while nations retreat behind walls built from the very bricks of empire they once used to build global bridges. Talk about vertical growth.

But here’s the real punchline: while the original Dutch gardeners at least had to get their hands dirty, today’s inheritors of this colonial garden simply pluck the fruits and call themselves self-made farmers.
They launch electric cars instead of sailing ships, mine cryptocurrency instead of emeralds, and colonize digital spaces instead of physical ones.

The same garden, different tools—all while nations that once proudly planted their flags across the globe now scramble to uproot themselves from the very international systems they cultivated.

Meanwhile, those whose ancestors were forced to tend this garden generation after generation watch as new tech empires rise from the same old colonial soil and former imperial powers throw tantrums about the multicultural gardens they themselves planted.
The VOC’s modest vegetable patch has grown into a global tech empire, but the question remains: who really owns the harvest?

The next time Musk tweets about free markets and meritocracy, someone should remind him that his success isn’t just about PayPal and Tesla.
It’s about a garden planted in 1652, tended by forced labour, structured by the colonial power, and inherited by those lucky enough to be born into the gardener’s family.

A garden now watching its original planters scramble to build walls around their plots while still expecting to enjoy all the exotic fruits they’ve grown accustomed to importing.
After all, reaching for Mars is much easier when you’re standing on centuries of carefully cultivated privilege – even if you’re doing it from behind newly erected garden walls.

But don’t worry – I’m sure all those vegetables the VOC planted were organic.
And Amexit means Brexit, even if it withers the garden.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra