Famed safari resort has more eco appeal with new garden
Angama Mara, the award-winning luxury safari lodge in Kenya's famed Maasai Mara, is located in one of the iconic spots from the film Out of Africa.
Now, Angama Mara has a farm of its own. Swahili for vegetable garden, the Shamba is fast becoming a much-loved experience for Angama Mara's guests.
Designed by architect, Ian Dommisse, the Shamba is built with environmentally friendly construction methods, and is divided into five zones for different produce, including: pumpkins and fruit trees; citrus and blooming red spirals; crop circles and helping herbs; dining and lazing; and a Kenyan medicinal healing garden.
When the Shamba is fully planted it will provide most of the lodge's need for fine salads, herbs, tomatoes and baby vegetables.
Located within easy walking distance of the lodge, most guests stop by on their way to or from the reserve. The Shamba keepers welcome guests at the passionfruit bower that forms the entrance to the garden.
They then guide guests via meandering paths through the oneacre garden, explaining all the produce and encouraging guests to pick and taste the produce along the way.
The design is magical and the Shamba keepers share the story behind its unique layout. This is not Mr. McGregor's vegetable patch.
The lodge offers private Shamba-to-table lunches in the garden under romantic towering shade trees. Guests can pick their own ingredients, which are then washed and readied for the freshest possible salad.
Angama Mara's butlers prepare a wicker basket filled with loaves of bread, local Kenyan cheeses and chilled rosé wine to accompany the salad.
Guests are left to while away the afternoon taking in sweeping views of the Mara below, while watching the butterflies and birds dance around the garden.
The Shamba-to-table experience is just one of the included activities available to guests at Angama Mara. For more information, please see angama.com/experience/. ABOUT ANGAMA MARA: High above the Maasai Mara on the very site where some of the most romantic scenes from Out of Africa were filmed, Angama Mara, opened June 14, 2015.
It is comprised of two separate and intimate camps, each encompassing 15 tented guest suites, placed just on the edge of the Oloololo Escarpment on one of the most sought-after parcels of land on the entire continent.
The lodge, helmed by renowned industry-leaders Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald (formerly of &Beyond), boasts the most outstanding game viewing 12 months of the year in the Mara Triangle, with direct access to the reserve.
Inspired by the Swahili word for suspended in mid air,' the lodge seems to float 1,000 feet above the Great Rift Valley, where, every morning, hot air balloons sail past the 30-foot-wide floor-to-ceiling glass fronts of each suite.
Guests enjoy a fitness centre, a 40-foot-long swimming pool, a curated gallery of African art, clothing and jewelry, and a sun-filled studio where local Maasai women work at beading bespoke items.