Farms are the NEW SPAS
Farms are the NEW SPAS DEPARTURES 48 If there is one thing that most of us learned during Covid lockdowns, it’s that nature can help us heal, particularly city dwellers who spend too much time inside and on screens. To that end, in the last decade or so, forward-thinking resorts have started to invest in farms over golf courses, and now more and more of them are integrating their wellness programmes on the land, planting medicinal plants, yoga pavilions and practitioners amongst the vegetable beds. Pioneering examples of this include the Garden Spa at Babylonstoren in South Africa (babylonstoren.com), where paths through trees and herbal gardens lead from one wellness adventure to the next, and Borgo Santo Pietro in Tuscany (borgosantopietro.com), a former monastery which is now an elegant and expansive estate with a farm and fields of medicinal herbs, where everything from an artist’s house to massage pavilions and a fermentation lab is located within the heart of diverse gardens. Even before Heckfield Place opened in 2019 as an exclusive country-estate resort in Hampshire, there was a huge investment of time and funds given over to the gardens and its farm. The focus here is on regenerative agriculture, which means working with nature to improve soil health and lower greenhouse-gas emissions. The property also took its time – more than four years – to build its spa. The Bothy (heckfieldplace.com) is a two-storey, nearly 1,600sq m building without clocks (guests have to check in their phones, so time really does disappear) which contains Set on a country estate in Hampshire, Heckfield Place’s Bothy spa is a beautifully designed universe that is used by only a handful of guests at a time CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: EMMA JUDE JACKSON, © HECKFIELD PLACE, DOOK
CLARISSA KOENIG Clockwise far left: a cosy reading nook at Sterrekopje; an idyllic scene in Heckfield Place’s vast walled gardens; a stroll in the verdant gardens at Babylonstoren multiple treatment rooms, an ionised chlorine-free pool with a view of oak trees and fields of wildflowers, a lounge library to relax and wait for your next treatment and a cafe with a plant-based menu overseen by the celebrated chef Skye Gyngell. It is a beautifully designed universe that is used by only a handful of guests at a time. And despite the temptation to spend hours here, a bulk of the wellness practices at Heckfield take place outside the walls of The Bothy, where the surrounding gardens and forests contain all manner of surprises, including yoga pavilions, therapeutic walking trails and workout stations. Two other examples of new spa resorts that immerse their guests in Arcadian regenerative farms are the stunning Es Racó d’Artà (esracodarta. com), a historic finca estate complete with olive groves and hemp fields, restored by the architects Esteva i Esteva, in Mallorca, and the now two-year-old Sterrekopje Farm in South Africa’s Franschhoek Valley (sterrekopje.com), a sumptuously decorated manor house with 11 rooms surrounded by 50 hectares of gardens and farmland. At the latter, the owners, Nicole Boekhoorn and Fleur Huijskens (also partners in life), have guests embrace disconnection and slow living in nature, which might entail harvesting medicinal herbs to make tea or learning to bake bread with the pastry chef. There’s wild swimming, hiking, landscape painting, ceremonies around a fire pit and meditation sessions under the moon surrounded by gardens, as well as freshly pressed juices and delicious plant-based meals made from the bounty of the farm. Take a HIKE There’s something about hiking, especially in nature, that not only pushes one’s body, but clears the head and opens the mind. Creative thinkers – both past, like the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who once said “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”, and present, such as the author Rebecca Solnit – have often claimed that walking inspires enlightened contemplation. Scientists are now publishing research that proves it: a study from Stanford University suggests that frequent walkers are better creative thinkers; another recent Stanford study showed that those that walk in nature (as opposed to a city environment) are significantly less depressed. The Ranch retreat, founded more than a decade ago in Malibu by husband-and-wife team Alex and Sue Glasscock, is legendary for its boot-camp-style daily four-hour hikes followed by yoga, a massage and low-calorie plant-based meals. The Glasscocks have said the importance of the hikes – which are typically done with a group – is as much about communing with others as it is about immersing oneself in nature. This simple formula has proven to be so successful that they opened a satellite in Italy last year, and will launch one in New York’s Hudson Valley next spring. Set within a historic estate, built originally by financier JP Morgan for his daughter in 1902, it is surrounded by 81 hectares of private land adjacent to the 1,600ha Ringwood State Park. Apparently, the Glasscocks think New Yorkers can’t keep up with the original Ranch formula: at the newest Ranch, they are offering a shorter, less austere three-day version with two-hour hikes. theranchmalibu.com The plantfringed grounds of The Ranch Malibu 49 DEPARTURES
