Yvette Anderson and her partner, metaverse specialist Dale Imerman, felt an instant connection with the Karoolkie cob-house estate on their first visit in 2021. The 6ha smallholding in the centre of Barrydale belonged to Gerald and Carol Phillips.
“It could have been a picture straight out of Tuscany… The vineyard looked happy, but I could see the trees in the neglected olive grove were deeply unhappy,” Yvette recounts. “And what you see above ground usually reflects what is happening below it.”
Yvette, a landscape architect and ecological farmer, had spent the previous five years turning a ruined old golf course near Citrusdal into a thriving fynbos habitat with indigenous medicinal plants. She uses these plants for her product range Yamù Botanicals, which includes tea blends, dried herbs, tinctures and incense bundles. She saw
