Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Gardens
Leafy and central
At a glance
A lush, tree-lined neighbourhood at the foot of Table Mountain. Close to Company's Garden, great restaurants on Kloof Street, and easy access to the cable car.
Strengths
- Central location
- Close to Table Mountain
- Kloof Street dining
Trade-offs
- Steep hills
- Traffic congestion
- Street parking limited
- LocationCity Bowl · on the map
- Without a carEasy without a car
- AtmosphereLively
- Page reviewed6 Sep 2026
- Rent and price dataSep 2026
Staying or living here
Visiting
Gardens suits visitors who want to walk to dinner: most guesthouses and short-let flats sit within a few blocks of Kloof Street, with the Company's Garden, Long Street and the Labia Theatre reachable on foot. Upper Gardens, towards Tamboerskloof and Oranjezicht, is quieter and greener; Lower Gardens, near the Long Street junction, is closer to the nightlife and noisier at weekends. Look for a building with secure access and off-street parking if you hire a car, and ask about backup power. The Mount Nelson on Orange Street is the area's grand hotel; smaller hotels and serviced flats along Kloof Street and around Wembley Square cover the mid-range.
Living here
Safety and walking
Kloof Street and the upper residential streets are comfortable on foot by day and busy into the evening. Walk in company on Kloof Street late at night and avoid the lower junction with Long Street after about 11pm, where phone snatching and robbery near bar exits are the common complaints. Theft from motor vehicles is the most frequent recorded crime, concentrated where street parking is unavoidable in Lower Gardens, so leave nothing visible in a car. For anything longer than a couple of blocks after dark use Uber or Bolt. The Lower Gardens City Improvement District adds patrols to the commercial end of the suburb.
Incident map, official SAPS statistics, safety zones and trends for the whole district.
View Crime ReportStreet-by-street zones, walking routes, recent incidents and what locals say.
Read GuideGetting around
Gardens is the most walkable of the City Bowl suburbs: the CBD, Long Street and the Company's Garden are 10 to 20 minutes on foot downhill, and Kloof Street runs the length of the suburb. MyCiTi services on Kloof Nek Road connect to the Civic Centre and Camps Bay, and Uber or Bolt to the V&A Waterfront or Camps Bay takes under ten minutes outside peak. Streets steepen towards Tamboerskloof and the mountain, and the walk back from town is uphill. Parking is the daily problem: many older buildings have no bays and Lower Gardens street parking is chronically full. The airport is about 25 to 35 minutes by car.
Everyday life
Gardens Shopping Centre on Mill Street has Woolworths Food, Pick n Pay and a Clicks pharmacy, and Wembley Square adds a gym, restaurants and shops. Kloof Street is the café and restaurant strip. The Company's Garden and De Waal Park are the green spaces. Jan van Riebeeck school is on Kloof Street and several City Bowl primaries are nearby; Mediclinic Cape Town on Hof Street and the Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital are within a short drive. Weekend noise near lower Kloof Street and Long Street is the main trade-off, and the south-easter is milder here than higher up in Vredehoek.
Map of the area
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Updates and sources
- Page reviewed 6 September 2026
- Data period Rent and price figures: September 2026
- Data period Short-let figures (Inside Airbnb, council ward 77): 23 September 2026
- Data period Ward Safety Index evidence: Jan-Jun 2026 (SAPS Q1 2026/2027)
- Method How the Ward Safety Index is built
- Evidence District crime report · official SAPS statistics, incident map, quarterly trends
- Guide Gardens Safety Guide
- Article Crime Hotspot Cape Town: Gardens Centre off-ramp after dark
Safety scores and property data are estimates based on publicly available sources and may not reflect current conditions. Always exercise personal judgement and conduct your own research before making housing or travel decisions.