Supplying herbs to major brands

In the mid-1990s, Lizette Kloppers, a former landscaper, planted cocktail tomatoes in a tunnel on her family farm Rooikrans, on the outskirts of Worcester in the Western Cape.

“I started to experiment with tomatoes for family consumption and shared the surplus with friends,” she recalls.

At the time, she was reading one of Margaret Roberts’s books on herbs, and came across the concept of companion planting.

“This is based on the principle that certain plants can attract or repel insects or provide beneficial support to other plants. The book suggests that tomato and basil are a good match for companion planting, so I decided to give it a try.”