‘Bring us magic’ — the story of Brahman Hills in the KZN Midlands

In the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, a former roadside motel has been transformed into Brahman Hills, now home to one of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Partner Gardens.

That transformation, shaped during the Covid-19 lockdown and developed into a five-hectare landscape of forest walks, flowerbeds and sculptures, is the subject of a new coffee table book, Brahman Hills: The Making of a World-Class Garden. Written by Iain Buchan, Michele Magwood and landscape architect Tim Steyn, with photography by Connall Oosterbroek, the book traces how a neglected property was turned into a botanical attraction. Here is an excerpt.

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Iain Buchan believes in magic. It’s a word that trails him, from the grounds of his gardens to his boardrooms, from the galleries of his art adviser to the snows of Antarctica, where he has trekked twice. There are other words that define his outlook, such as authenticity and love, qualities that underpin his company, and he has a plainly stated purpose: to shift people’s lives. But it’s magic that he looks for the most. So it’s fitting that, in the most trying and dark years in our recent history, he was able to make magic. Not single-handedly, mind, but it was his determination and vision that drove it. To understand the enterprise of Brahman Hills, we need to understand its founder. Iain says he was born restless. His father was of Scottish descent and his mother was from solid English stock. Both were doctors who ministered to poor rural communities in what was then the Transkei. Iain grew up in the village of Lusikisiki, in Mpondoland. The name Lusikisiki comes from the rustling sound the reeds make in the rivers. His parents worked long hours, leaving Iain and his younger siblings, Alastair and Jenny, to run wild. 

He grew up, he says, barefoot and unruly, speaking fluent isiXhosa, roaming the hills. Because his parents didn’t always charge their patients, they often couldn’t pay their own bills. Struggle had a noble edge in their house, he says, and his parents’ liberal thinking put them at odds with other families in the community. As a child he was fascinated by adventure stories and heroes like Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton. Sent to boarding school in Durban at the age of eight, Iain was a rebel, chafing at authority, and was caned relentlessly for bad behaviour. He and his brother saw their parents only in the school holidays and they lacked their guidance. Beaten and bullied, Iain channelled his anger into rugby and excelled at St Andrew’s, his senior school. 

At the University of Cape Town, he says, he was still angry, furious at being called up for army camps that interfered with his engineering studies. He successfully petitioned the government to exclude engineers from the time-wasting call-ups. Iain learned his first lesson in authority then: that leadership is taken, not given. 

This would be one of the tenets of his business in the years to come. He is a bold man, a scrapper, direct and energetic, as dauntless as were the Scottish settlers who came here in the mid-19th century, and with the same intrepid drive. 

With Carol, he bought a farm in the Nottingham Road area, where they were planning on retiring and slowing down. In 2011, the couple heard that the property next door was to be sold. It contained a ropey filling station and a run-down motel, and it was rumoured that a full-on truck stop was going to be opened there. 

A consortium of local farmers decided to buy it, and when the others changed their minds, Iain bought it himself. He didn’t have the heart to close the business and put the employees on the streets. He and Carol were now the not-yet-proud owners of a garage and a two-star motel on a cattle farm. 

The Midlands was becoming a popular destination for weddings, so with rooms to fill and bills to pay, the Buchans decided to create a venue by building a small dam with a rustic, picturesque chapel on its banks. 

Although it was modest – a green slope, really, with a few dickied-up sheep sheds and outbuildings – the bookings started to roll in. The staff raced to revamp the venue. On one Saturday they were still tightening the hinges on the chapel doors as the bride and her attendants proceeded down the hill. But Iain wasn’t satisfied. It still lacked magic, he felt, and he kept repeating his mantra, ‘Where is the why?’ 

Carol Buchan was an excellent gardener, and together they had visited some of the most magnificent gardens in the world, such as Versailles in France and the Alhambra palace in Spain. They had also admired the Adachi Museum Gardens in Japan. Why couldn’t they make a garden on a grand scale on their farm? 

This would be the ‘why’ that Iain was looking for. Brahman Hills was to be transformed into a magical garden, a world-famous garden. 

Just how they would achieve it while the venue continued running, they couldn’t quite work out. They couldn’t afford to close it, so Iain had visions of hiding the building site behind sheets on a Thursday, tidying it up for the weekend wedding, and then resuming construction on the Monday. They’d make it work somehow, even if it meant brides dragging their trains in the mud. 

The Buchans had met the renowned landscaper Tim Steyn on a beach holiday in Transkei, and they now turned to him to design the Brahman Hills gardens. 

Bring us magic, said Iain, and Tim set to work on ambitious, dramatic plans that would do just that. 

Just as he completed the drawings, the world woke up to the catastrophe of the Covid-19 pandemic. South Africa, like so many other countries, locked down. Things seemed to dangle, suspended in time. DM