A Swiss barn and Swahili rondavels by Lake Naivasha

Dea’s Gardens is a family guest house in ten acres of garden on Moi South Lake Road, Naivasha, about 80 km from Nairobi. Guests stay in the family home and eat at its table.

Two countries, one house

Dea is from Tanzania; her husband, Hans, was from Switzerland. They met in Tanzania, moved to Kenya and, after eight years there, bought ten acres by Lake Naivasha.

They built the family home in the style of a Bernese barn from Hans’s Switzerland. The guest cottages came later, in the form of Swahili rondavels — the two cultures side by side. Dea was widowed in 2008. Two years later she closed the farm and opened the house to guests.

The main house from the side: grey block walls under a steep, low-eaved roof, ivy on one corner, a pink-flowering tree and a sunlit lawn

Ten acres of garden

The house’s own site calls the gardens Dea’s pride and joy. There is a pool on the lawn, a reed-roofed shelter, and a library of books and magazines to borrow.

Guests staying more than a couple of nights are welcome to help in the garden. There is plenty to paint, too: the flowers, the birds, the acacias in the warm light at sunset.

The garden seen from under a reed-roofed shelter: a wide lawn, palms and flowering shrubs, and the pool in the distance

From the vegetable patch

Most herbs, vegetables and salads are grown organically in the house’s vegetable patch. Dinner is served in the dining room, around the family’s large table. The kitchen caters for special diets given notice, and anyone who wants to cook is welcome in Dea’s large home kitchen.

An omelette with two halves of tomato and a sprig of parsley on a white plate, set on a blue and straw-coloured woven placemat

The days are warm and the evenings cool, and the house has a brick fireplace for them.

A fire burning behind a wrought-iron guard in a raised brick fireplace, logs stacked beside it, candles and carved figures along the mantel

Down to the lake

The lake is a short walk away. Hippos wallow in the shallows, waterbuck, eland and buffalo graze on the shore, and more than 400 species of bird have been seen there.

Neighbours on the lake run boat rides. Further out are Crescent Island, where visitors walk among the animals; Hell’s Gate, by hired bicycle or on foot into the gorge; and Lake Nakuru National Park, known for its flamingos, about an hour away.

From Nairobi, the house’s directions take the old road through Mai Mahiu, for the views of the escarpment. Turn onto South Lake Road just before Naivasha town; the house is exactly two kilometres along, on the right.

Plan a stay: https://deas-gardens.netlify.app