I first met Zion Ellis in 2011 while on a research trip in Ghana for my Eco-travel company. I was traveling with my dad and we had reached a little beach resort in the Western Region of Ghana called The Hideout. After dinner we were drinking some beers by the beach side and we met Ellis and a Dutch guy who recently got some land in the area and was building a house. Ellis seemed quite funny, wild and profane at first but it made for an interesting evening. He said he had a little coffee shop near by and served space cakes.
My dad was settling into bed and everyone else had left I eventually went trooping around trying to find his place because I was looking for a little hit of the devils lettuce to wind down the day and have a good nights sleep. I got very poor directions earlier so I started creeping around a few houses down the beach without knocking on any doors I did not get the vibe I was on the right track. So I went up the road that went inland and eventually ran into a sign that let me know I was on the right track.
I wondered into the dark garden and down the path to a single dark round house that I could hear him and the Dutch guy inside chatting. I called out and knocked the door and I was warmly welcomed. I also got a good high that I was looking for. I had a good chat about the origins of his place and what was going on in the area. I stumbled back to the beach resort and had a good nights rest.
Inside the front room of the roundhouse.
The next morning before walking over to the next town I stopped by again to document the place and take some pictures. My dad also was happy to get a fresh brewed cup of coffee. This was my first introduction to Green Zion Gardens and through the years I have continued to come back and I have formed a brotherhood with Ellis I never would have imagined.
The path into the garden.
Ellis grew up in the next community over Busua. Busua has always been a highlight for travelers in Ghana and I think that Ellis got his taste for catering to international travelers during that time. His brother got involved with a Swedish lady and they built The Hideout together and Ellis was part of all of this also. His brother eventually left to Sweden and Ellis found his own little piece of land up the road.
Zion Garden's first bar and scare crow.
When I visited in 2011 and took the above photos I think that Ellis was about a year or two into building the place by hand. There was no power, no flowing water and every thing was built by his own two hands.
Inside the guest room round house.
Simple but comfortable was the name of the game here and I think he
did it well.
I hit the road again after that first visit and I did not link with Ellis again until Christmas of 2013. This was my first year permanantly living in Ghana and I did not have a lot of friend to roam with yet. I had a good ammount of time off for Christmas so I took off on my own to the Western Region with the goal of staying at Green Zion Gardens. I think I had about 5 days to spend.
It had been about 3 years then since I had seen Ellis or Green Zion Gardens so I was not ready for the amount of change and work he had put in.
The first major change was this 2 story tree house structure at the front of the property. It had a little bar and craft shop under it and a room to stay at the top. The garden had grown up immensely also.
In the back was the foundation of another small round house that I think Ellis may have started at one point but it turned into a fire pit. During my time there there was another American guy staying there with his Ghanaian girlfriend his name was Spenser and after this trip we continued to run into each other in Accra and our networks merged before he moved out of Ghana. We had some good times around the fire at night with Ellis playing some drums and singing some songs. Guess it would be similar to local country music with the theme being it is not easy for a single rasta man living in paradise.
This is the main house again about the only thing that did not change.
In addition to the tree house room and the main house Ellis had built another two rooms. The room I stayed in was part of this and called the Selasie Room, at this time the toilet and bath were at the back there and were bucket operated.
The room was comfortable and all that I needed. But at one point during my stay I heard some wrestling around in the bath house and found this huge mama spider carrying around its sack of eggs. It was big enough that you could hear it move. I did not care to mess with it so I let it do its thing.
His place is about a 3 minute walk from the beach. There is an iconic stone on the beach there this is said to be the nose of a giant that came to rest and lay down there.
I went on a crocodile safari in a canoe on the river that is just past the giants nose between there and the village. Perhaps all the photos from this will be a post for another day. I did not see any crocs that day but it was a lovely time on the river.
Just above the mouth of the river is an old colonial fort. It was used for repairing ships for the Dutch West Indies company because of the safe harbor and the abundance of large timber around. I am sure it was deeply involved in the slave trade that was going on during that time also.
Me and Ellis had a great time on that visit he had a motor bike then and we went cruising around the jungle having a great time going to and from Busua. A couple of incidences stand out in my mind. One riding on the paved part after joining the main road to Busua, the pot holes were relentless and sometimes we would hit one hard and it would really jar my balls sitting on the back. Another one we were riding through the jungle at night I think we had had some beer because we both needed to pee. We jumped off the bike and started peeing by the side of the road but my legs started burning and itching. I put the light on on my phone and look down I am standing in the middle of an ants nest peeing. You can imagine that made for an interesting stomp dance with water world on the road that night. The motor bike was a street bike looking thing with a small 150cc engine in it, it had street tires and was probably not the best match for the jungle but it is what we had so we move. One time we were coming back to the Gardens and the road turns into a two track at some point and gets quite sandy it is important to keep momentum up. Or you fall over a couple of times like we did, laughing all the way.
My next visit was in 2014 when I went for Asa Baako festival for the first time which I recently posted on. Green Zion Gardens is about a 45 minute walk along the beach from the festival area and I decided to stay with Ellis and walk each day over to the festival.
I took a picture of this beautiful grass hopper in the garden.
Every morning when you wake up there the whole garden is an orchestra of birds and it is such a nice sound in the morning.
Weavers had taken over one of the palm trees making their iconic penthouses.
The pathways through the gardens.
Another view out towards the road.
Here is Ellis bar tending at the jungle party that year.
In 2014 I was staying in Busua the next town over the cape and walked over with a drone videoagrapher to visit the castle. I had Ellis meet us there. I will probably share the pics and video from the drone in another post dedicated to that.
I visited and stayed with Ellis again in 2015 and 2016 for the Asa Baako Festival but I have no memorable pictures from this trip. From 2017 onward I started sleeping at the festival in my hammock but I still visited.
Here is my hammock hung in Ellis yard.
The tree house got a paint job.
The structure around the main house grew and was replaced with proper lumber from the rafia it was previously made from.
This was a year of massive changes. Sometime in 2016 Ellis met Irene a British woman and they started seeing each other and eventually ened up married and she helped him invest heavily in the property including buying some of the land across the road. Here is bucket parked in front of the Green Zion new expansion and the gardens were started from this point. As usual Ellis had been very busy sculpting the place with his bare hands. Often when he came to Accra he would stay with me also.
Another pic of bucket parked at the gardens.
A new sign including Irene's Thai Massage.
He started constructing a dormitory room on the new property. He used a traditional mud ball construction and put bottles in the wall to let light in.
Aroudn the front of the same structure.
The inside and you can see the light coming through the bottles and the door to the bathroom at the back.
Another house under construction.
The mud ball construction makes for nice cool round houses.
Another view of the new property.
In 2019 when I was at Asa Baako I took some friend on a hike over and we visited Ellis again. And this time there was more progress as always.
The tree house had a new make over.
There were some new structures under construction.
A restaurant and bar in the works.
Inside the restaurant and bar.
A close up of the wall construction.
In 2020 I visited again taking a walk over the cape from Busua with my friend Mirco to see Ellis and see the continued expansion and good work he is doing.
It looks like I really only got these two pics though.
After the lift of the lock down and life getting back to normal. Last year in 2021 around this time May @dzigbordi and I visited a friend in Takoradi and we went to the Hideout for a night. While there we walked up the road and visited my friend Ellis again. I got a few shots but @Dzigbordi got in the way of most of scenery, hmmm where was my focus at.
I am hoping next month we will get a chance to go down that way around Dzigbordi's birthday. Then I will see again what my hard working brother has come up with. Thanks for taking another journey to somewhere special to me in Ghana.
