NOTE: I wrote this story for The Witness to promote Ian Tyrer’s Open Gardens Day.

A sense of adventure is rooted deep in Ian Tyrer’s blood. The lure of the frontier and the deep joy with which he responds to the African landscape has taken him all over the continent. He has cycled through Mozambique, paddled canoes across Lake Malawi, rubbed shoulders with gorillas in Rwanda., chatted with chimpanzees in Uganda, felt the spray of the Murchison Falls from a boat, gazed in awe at the largest mammal migration in the world of Straw-coloured Fruit Bats in Zambia, and shared the sweeping views from a mountain top in the Ethiopian Highlands with a troop of Gelada Baboon, a charismatic primate found only in this region…

When Ian travels, he is quite happy to dispense with all the modern comforts and conveniences that most tourists insist on. He relishes the challenge of living rough. He cadges lifts in local vehicles, gets taxied on the back of motorcycles and crams himself onto crowded buses, trucks, trains and ferries. He is equally happy to sleep wherever he finds himself, be it in a tent, hut, dive or – as sometimes happens – a hotel or lodge.

In many of his journeys Ian has been joined by his wife, the equally adventurous and resourceful Mandy, who, in her other life, runs the much respected Maritzburg Tutor Centre. Together they make a formidable team.

A man of buttonholing vigour, a somewhat different adventure has, however, brought Ian back to his own backyard. As a young man, he travelled the seas in the navy. Three years after his discharge, Ian bought Ingelsby Farm, in the Richmond area, from his father. After later selling off a portion of it, he kept a few dairy cows and cultivated a patch of vegetables.

Then, inspired by his love of nature, he developed a new vision for the farm. He decided he wanted to rewild it, to husband it in an old-fashioned, chemical-free way back to its former self. He wanted to see if he could entice back the animals, birds, reptiles and insects that once lived there. To bring back the flowers, wild grasses, shrubs and trees.

What Ian wanted to create was, in short, a farm with a commitment to conservation.

In many ways it was the perfect piece of land to carry out such an experiment. Ingelsby sits in a beautiful, secluded valley. A winding stream cut through the middle of it. On the one side of the stream is a steep hillside. On the other side, some wide, open landscape where you often see large flocks of Grey- crowned cranes.

Initially, Ian concentrated on the gorge section where there was already a semblance of a forest. He tried to get everything to grow that he could. He planted White Stinkwood, three types of Yellowwood, Natal Fig, Natal Mahogany, Natal Plum, White Ironwood, Umzimbeet, Cape Chestnut, Cape Ash, Weeping Boerbean and many more.

His rewilding programme began to pay dividends in all the best ways. The wildlife that had elsewhere been dispossessed by agriculture and the clearing of lands began to return, their old rhythms restored. Bushbuck became regular night visitors to his garden. Otters returned to his stream.

Assisted by his son Ryan (“Dumbie”), a professional bird guide with Rockjumper Tours, his bird list began to swell – Wood Owl, Yellow-throated Woodland Warbler, Blue-mantled Crested Flycatcher, and White-eared Barbet, among others, got added to it. Each new sighting brought its own sense of triumph. Ian’s vision was being realised.

There was something almost miraculous about it.

In an attempt to seduce even more birds into his garden, Ian erected a bird table directly outside his bedroom window, so he and Mandy could lie in bed and watch all the activity. The square metre of board became a sort of Piccadilly Circus for birds. Dozens and dozens of bright yellow Village Weavers, from a nearby colony, fussed, twittered, argued and chirped on it. Thick-billed Weavers. Red Bishop Birds, Mannikins, Sparrows and Waxbills joined the scrum..

There were setbacks, of course. Poachers got wind that there were buck about and set snares in the forest. Over a hundred Yellowwoods got cut down by a contractor who thought they were wattle. But Ian, with his unconventional streak, is not a man easily deterred. He appealed, through The Witness, for anyone who wanted to donate trees to replace them. The public responded generously. I donated a Henkel’s Yellowwood I had grown from a seed I had picked up on one of my birdwatching trips. It is now a tall tree.

And so it continues. More trees get planted. More wildlife reappears.

One beautiful morning, I drove out to Ingelsby. The route took me through the kilometres of settlement and urban sprawl that surround Pietermaritzburg. Beyond that, the mixed woodland and thornveld that once dominated the hills and valleys around here is rapidly diminishing and being replaced by hectares of sugar cane, a dull monotone scene that is effectively dead to wildlife.

A couple of kilometres after I had branched off the main Pietermaritzburg to Richmond road, I turned into Ian’s driveway and stopped, momentarily transfixed. The entrance was lined on both sides by a long corridor of indigenous trees. The ground below them was lit by the orange-red glow of a thick mass of clivias. Swathes of creepers, succulents, gorgeous tree orchids and other vegetation filled in the gaps, creating a harmony of colour, light and shade.

I parked my car under a massive old fig tree whose bulbous roots spread out like tentacles across the ground’s surface and in whose branches the weavers had built nests and the Hadedahs, with their raucous calls, liked to sit.

Ian had made the Bird and Bush, a tree house he had built on the edge of the forest, available for the night. That evening my companion and I sat outside on its balcony under a star-smattered sky and listened to the night sounds. We listened to rustles, creaks and whisperings of the branches above, to the stream bursting with riotous laughter as it bubbled over rocks and roots directly below, and to a chorus of frogs, bats, crickets, insects and other ancient flying things. Somewhere in the background, a Fiery-necked Nightjar began its beautiful requiem to the African night.

The next morning brought forth a slightly different, but equally melodious, chorus of sounds – Robins, Orange Bush Shrike, Paradise Flycatchers, Cape Batis, Black-headed Orioles, Cape Turtle Doves, Olive Thrush, various cuckoos and Knysna Loeries

Rising early, I grabbed my binoculars and headed off to explore, following the path that led along the stream, peering closer at everything. Making use of a massive tree trunk that had conveniently fallen across it, I crossed and headed into the forest. Twigs snapped and whispered under my feet. Rotting trunks lay covered in moss, and everywhere the slow decay of leaves and the fungi added a pungent tang to the cool, sun-dappled air. I was in my element.

I spent several rewarding hours wandering through the forest. I made my way up towards the cave, at the base of a steep cliff, where, local legend has it, King Shaka drove a local clan into. No one seems to know exactly what transpired thereafter, but in the half-gloom of the forest, the place did indeed feel full of secrets, not all of them good ones. Adding to the air of mystery are the rocks by the cave which are reputedly not from the area. Feeling a little uneasy, I threaded my way down and crossed back over the sparkling stream onto the old pasture land, which Ian is now also giving over to trees. I skirted past the beehives to the main house verandah, with its multitude of bonsai, for breakfast.

As I sipped my coffee, I reflected on what had taken place around me. It marked a small but important victory. Over a period of many years, Ian has gone a long way to restoring biodiversity and increasing ecosystem health. In doing so, has also made his little contribution to countering the effects of climate change.

It ignited a spark of happiness in me. As more and more of our wooded areas and pristine grassland disappear under the bulldozer and the developers continue their relentless march, destroying habitats that have existed for centuries, it is nice to know there is one little sanctuary that, for the moment, remains beyond their reach