The retreat’s design is a celebration of texture, warmth, and the poetic tension between old and new. Interior designer Gregory Mellor has infused the historic Cape Dutch buildings with a sense of lived-in elegance, blending natural materials with worldly treasures. Each space tells a story, from the dining room with its oak table and botanical frescoes, to the infusions room where medicinal herbs dry against walls layered with pages from antique botanical books.

The heart of the house, however, is the kitchen—a welcoming expanse where guests gather around a sunlit central table, watch the bakers at work, or linger in the adjacent orangery, sipping freshly brewed herbal teas. Handcrafted ceramics from the farm’s own workshop, embroidered silks, and suzanis add to the layered, sensory richness of the interiors, while the rhythmic arrangement of terracotta tiles and herringbone-patterned bricks evoke a sense of permanence and place.

Beyond the walls of the farmhouse, wellness takes many forms, all of them deeply rooted in nature such as the Bath House, the Soul Shed, and the Yurt offering immersive rituals, energy-balancing therapies, yoga and breathwork sessions. Countless idyllic spots designed for reading, resting, and recharging can be found scattered around the estate’s verdant grounds, including numerous gardens, a boating lake, and a shimmering swimming pool ideal for cooling off under the African sun.

At its core, Sterrekopje is of course a retreat but not in the sense of escaping, but in the truest sense of returning—to nature, to community, to the self. “Just being among all of this, it does something to you,” Boekhoorn muses. “It grounds you; it allows you to surrender, it allows you to just be.” And in a world that so often demands the opposite, this might just be the greatest luxury of all.