Garden Route tree house accommodation, South Africa

We offer you rental access to canopy height treehouses in a pristine forested gorge. We are total tree huggers, fanatical greenies who left the city to practice conservation and environmental sustainability. We have custody of an endangered piece of undamaged forest that survives in a gorge between farms on the South African Garden Route. Without ensuring well-being of people living in and around the forests, we cannot expect the forests to persist as complete functional eco systems. Our mission is simple: reverse the destruction of the forests by creating a sustainable eco-tourism resort.

You stay in the forest in comfort at treetop height so that you may relax in the natural splendour. We look after the forest so that you will pay to come back again when the pressures of city life are too great. We are a small business based in a rural community and draw all of our labour and resources locally. The model is proving sustainable (after 6 years) and is a viable alternative to the local practice of farming timber or cattle. We only employ local people who live within walking distance of the farm during both the building and running phase of the project. Local workers have gained carpentry and building skills under the supervision of our resident engineer. The treehouses have been built by local people using local materials with NO removal of indigenous trees. Construction is of wood, glass and canvas, designed to maximise your comfort while blending into the forest. All of the windows are recycled from demolished buildings. The treehouses are built on poles set into the forest floor between the trees in natural openings. The expansive wooden decking is sourced from local plantations via the local saw mill. In an individual capacity we help at the local community college, Eden Campus, running their Mathematics classes and Open Source IT lab. We have an active program of alien tree eradication using local labour. We teach our staff that conserving our unique environment is not only ecologically sound, it is also the basis of a stable business.

Climate change is a big concern, we actively try to minimize our energy usage whilst ensuring the long term sustainability of the indigenous forest on our farm. We are low density and low impact. We harvest our rain water which is crystal clear and use it for drinking and then we pump river water up for bathing and washing. The river water is brown in colour from the tannins in the fynbos (Natural South African flora), and contains minimal muddy sediment. Both river and rain water have been tested and are potable. The brown colour could be removed from the river water with flocculation (chemicals) and lots of energy and waste (completed flocculent). We felt this would not be environmentally justifiable. The brown river water does react with fabric softener creating unsightly brown stains. So we no longer use softener but rather EcoSoft washing powder which has a built in softener. (Our towels may feel a little harder than those you are used to). We need to process all our grey water and black water (toilets) ourselves. We predominantly use the latest dry toilet systems to safely and efficiently process human waste without threatening the sensitive Karatara catchment area; septic tanks are used where we don't do damage to the underlying root bed of the forest floor and are not on a water course.