Poplar Grove is a small farm in the arid Karoo region of South Africa. It lies about 30 km on a dirt road outside the town of Colesberg in the Northern Cape.
The homestead consists of a farmhouse with outbuildings, a zendo (meditation barn), a two-room cottage and three hermitages – the accommodations are all self-catering and without electricity. A spring rises nearby and flows into a kloof through a grove of poplar trees, from which the farm gets its name.
Poplar Grove is a home of Zen practice and persons are invited to stay at the farm for a retreat during certain times of the year. Poplar Grove Zen consists of traditional communal Zen practice in the zendo mornings and evenings, as well as optional meetings with the resident teachers, Antony and Margie Osler; for the rest of the time, guests are free to make themselves at home in the space and stillness of the veld.
Poplar Grove offers a variety of bird life and small game, good drinking water, safe veld walks, a night sky filled with stars, and a small Buddhist lending library. There are also signed copies of Antony’s books, Stoep Zen, Zen Dust and Mzansi Zen for purchase.
To stay at Poplar Grove, please contact Margie Osler at the contact details on the Contact page of this website for availability, cost, directions and other information.
Whatever we do is done with attention and an open heart - in one sense, this is nothing special; in another, it is a rare and brilliant flower.
