Stepping into the Southlands wilderness it is hard to image that this corner of Bermuda, filled with impenetrable overgrowth, might soon be replaced by a luxurious five-star hotel resort.

As reported in The Royal Gazette yesterday the 37-acre estate in Warwick has been earmarked for an ambitious hotel resort to be run by the world-leading hotel group Jumeirah.

What the Island stands to gain from the proposed hotel resort is now in the public domain — and the scope of the resort design is breathtaking.

But what will the Island lose? Many Bermudians do not know what lies beyond the decrepit, broken down wooden gates of the Southlands estate other than the magical glimpse from South Road of an old road meandering away beneath the stunning canopy of an ancient banyon tree and its ghostly, dense forest of aerial roots.

Lizards resembling pocket-sized dinosaurs scoot amongst the dense foliage that quickly creates an impenetrable physical barrier for even the most intrepid explorer.

When a full moon illuminates the untamed jungle owls often circle the tree tops and above the peppering of overgrown remains of an ambitious and intricate network of follies and quarried gardens hewn from the surroundings in the 19th and early 20th century.

One local remembers in the early 1970s the area was still mostly manicured and open to the public to explore and enjoy the wonderous gardens created by the late James Morgan, who owned the estate during the late 1800s until his death in 1932.

But around 30 years ago it fell into disrepair, becoming increasingly overgrown until almost everything was obscured from view except a few access roads to the scattering of cottages in the midst of the wilderness.

Appearing like a grotto carved from the hillside is the tomb for Mr. Morgan and Anna Morgan.

Over the years it has been smashed open and apparently used as a place of temporary shelter.

The tomb and some of the quarried gardens will be tidied up and preserved within the landscaped grounds of the proposed new hotel resort.

The local man, who said he would rather not be named, said in the past two years work has been down to clear many of the overgrown pathways and bring access to some of the old quarry gardens.

He spoke of workers finding worms and bugs and throwing them to one side where "dinosaurs would come out of the trees to eat them".

Explaining the "dinosaurs", he said: "They're lizards, but some of them are about a foot-long. And when the moon is full you often see owls circling above here."

And he said no matter how many times he visited, the magic and wonder of the wilderness filled with enormous trees, a vast array of ferns and creepers, and vegetation rarely seen anywhere else on the Island, such as Lady Palms, never ceased to amaze him.

"They should preserve some of it as it is. I know they are going to keep the banyon tree at the entrance. You could not get rid of that because that is something you want foreigners to see," he said.

"Some of this is like the movie Fern Gully, so overgrown. It is a lost world. You come up here and can forget about everything else that's going on.

"It's like the last Bermudian jungle, the natural landscape, fauna, animals and insects. I imagine this was how it was before the Island got populated."

The quarried gardens feature old ponds and water features.

The ponds were topped up by rainwater and had an intricate overflow system that channelled excess water to ponds lower down the hillside.

In such a undisturbed wilderness large groups of brightly-coloured birds can often be seen gathering in the trees, especially the ghostly banyon tree at the main entrance.

To the south of South Road the Southlands estate reaches the sea, with a sandy beach sprinkled with rocks and a cliff face providing evidence of the pounding and erosion endured during Hurricane Fabian.

Southlands today evokes an old untamed Bermuda and glimpses of a lost garden paradise evidence of a remarkable vision from more than a century past.

The question is; will it now all make way for a grand 21st century vision of five-star hotel resort with its own land bridge sloping to down to the ocean?