Notes from a Garden at Londolozi

Sitting outside my cottage in the Londolozi village the other afternoon, I found myself simply watching and listening. The small garden in front of me has become a kind of barometer for the seasons. As the air cools or warms, as the rains come or hold back, so too do the plants respond. Fresh shoots after a shower, flowers fading in the dry months, grasses rising and falling with the rhythms of the year. But what strikes me most is how these shifts bring different voices into the space. Namely the changing chorus of birds.

Some mornings are punctuated by the familiar calls of resident species such as Scrub-robins, Robin-chats and Bushshrikes, always present no matter the season. Yet as spring unfolds, new notes join the choir. The first Woodland Kingfisher, trilling brightly from a nearby knobthorn, seems to announce the turning of a page. Later still, the cuckoos arrive, each with its own call. These migrants have travelled many kilometres, sometimes thousands, drawn here precisely because the conditions have shifted in their favour. After all, it is the reason migration exists. To be in the right place at the right time.

That thought stayed with me a few days later while out tracking along the Maxabene riverbed. The sand was soft beneath our feet, etched with the fresh tracks of a female leopard. The riverbed is lined with ancient jackalberry and leadwood trees that hold the cool shade of late morning. Following the tracks, we rounded a bend where the dappled light seemed to thicken. There she was. A young female leopard stretched along the fallen trunk of a weeping boerbean tree. The Three Rivers Young Female.

For a while, we simply watched, captivated by her beauty. Her coat melted into the play of sun and shadow. But beneath that beauty lies an intricate web. She was only there because everything else was in place. Healthy herds of impala grazing nearby, dense thickets offering cover, and fresh pools of water not far away. The leopard, like the migrant birds in my garden, was the ‘flowering’ of a whole ecosystem working quietly in balance.

Before I ever had the opportunity to track leopards, I worked as a landscaper in the city of Cape Town. One truth I learnt early on was that if you want flowers, you don’t fuss over the petals. You nurture the soil, the water, the light. Create the conditions or the right environment, and the bloom will follow.

Here at Londolozi, it is no different. By safeguarding our unspoilt rivers, the grasses, the insects, and the smallest unseen parts of the whole, we are tending to the soil of the wild. And when the conditions are right, the leopards, the elephants, the migrants, the flowers of this living garden… will always come.

That is the quiet promise of wild. It is not one of guarantees, but of possibility. Every track, every birdsong, every rustle of grass is a sign of this promise. And if we keep protecting it, then generation after generation will find themselves pausing just like I do, in my garden, in a riverbed, beneath a tree, and marvelling at the flowers of the wild.