LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE owner of Montusi Mountain Lodge.“ We were very conscious that anything built here should disappear into the landscape rather than compete with it. The mountains dictate the scale, not the other way around.”
Infrastructure shaped by place
Infrastructure across the collection has evolved in response to the constraints and conditions of the mountain setting.
Solar installations support operations at The Cavern and Sungubala Eco Camp, reducing their dependence on external grid supply. Water is drawn from small mountain dams and filtered on-site and used across the properties, while bottled water has been replaced with filtration systems to reduce single-use plastic.
Guest facilities, including the spa and sauna at The Forest Retreat, have also been positioned in response to natural patterns of use rather than introduced as destination architecture. The intervention remains secondary to the terrain.
Beyond the buildings
Working with the landscape also requires managing and restoring it. Invasive wattle is continually cleared to allow indigenous vegetation to regenerate, while higher mountain grazing is removed to support ecological recovery. Eland now move freely through areas from which they had long been absent.
Erosion control and trail maintenance form part of long-term land stewardship that maintains the stability of the wider mountain system.
“ This is not a once-off project or a fixed state,” says Bedingham.“ It is an ongoing
At The Cavern, wastewater is treated through a decentralised wastewater treatment system before being returned safely to the environment.
Movement through the landscape has been approached with comparable restraint. Footpaths follow existing routes and remain narrow to limit disturbance. responsibility. The land changes, and our role is to stay attentive to that change and respond in a way that protects its long-term health.”
The properties also form part of the broader Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve initiative, which aims to strengthen formal protection and ecological continuity across the region. The Royal Drakensberg Education Trust extends this approach into surrounding communities through early childhood development and education, linking environmental care with social continuity and wellbeing of the people living closest to the land.
The lesson is not that every development in a sensitive environment should use stone and thatch. It is that the site should determine the materials, scale, infrastructure, and movement of a project.
Building in sensitive environments requires an acceptance of constraints. The success of a development should be measured not by how visibly it asserts itself, but by how carefully it fits with what was already there.
www. tobuild. co. za | spring 2026 91