I was the honoured guest of Pierre Bergé in Marrakech. Dar Es Saada, the guest house, and Villa Oasis surrounded by the gardens of the Jardin Majorelle, a part of which is open to the public - the painter, Jacques Marjorelle's studio is now a delectable gift shop, a bookshop and the Musée Berbère, an astonishing collection of Berber culture, artefacts, costumes, carpets and stunning jewellery. The museum supported by the Foundation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent - which will in a couple of years inaugurate another museum with other amenities such as a conference hall, an important collection of botanical books, and a display of Saint Laurent clothes. Another cultural awakening for Morocco.
On the outskirts of Marrakech Marella Agnelli and Madison Cox have created a vast garden worthy of Boccaccio's Decameron, not a garden but an idealised landscape, with miles of pergolas to shade you on your walks, with low adobe walls dividing the Olive groves, orchard of oranges and lemons meadows of poppies, daisies growing in long grass, venerable trees - the Olive trees often transplanted when uprooted by developers putting up new buildings for a new prosperous Moroccan middle class. Ceremonious avenues and paths lined with grasses lead to vegetable gardens and great plantations of roses, collections of the very best. This landscape of relentless beauty whose paths are lined with rills that take water to large square reservoirs is a sight that gladdens the soul. A book is in preparation and it will be sensational!
(Below are some images from both the delectable gardens)
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