Le Jardin Secret - Marrakech Morocco

One of my first stops on my trip to Marrakech was Le Jardin Secret. A restored Islamic garden with origins dating back to the Saadian Dynasty, more than four hundred years ago. The garden was rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century and has been the home of some of Morocco and Marrakech’s most important political figures.
The green spaces of Le Jardin Secret are divided into an exotic garden and an Islamic garden.The Islamic garden was restored following the likely nineteenth-century layout. Closely linked to the typical riad structures. The four-part layout of the Islamic garden was designed to facilitate the irrigation of the grounds and represent the description of heaven as narrated in the Quran. The garden is a metaphor of heaven, a sacred place, laid out according to rigid geometrical rules, in which order asserts itself over the wilds of nature. 

In the heart of Le Jardin Secret, similar to almost all Islamic gardens, there is a spring. Considered to be a symbol of life and a sign of God’s existence and power. In the Quran, heaven is described as a “garden in which streams flow”.

What I found most striking about the garden was the green tiled paving, a striking choice, that complements the reds and ochres of the surrounding architecture. Marrakech is in Hardiness zone USDA 10, meaning the planting had to have a certain level of resilience. Euphorbia ingens, Agave attenuate and Yucca rostrata along with Melianthus major, and a variety of euphoria contrast with Pennisetum villosum, mounds of Salvia, Stipa tenuissima, and Limonium perezii. Jasminum azoricum perfumes the garden in the evening, while the orange blossom of the formal rows of citrus trees creates scent in the daytime.

The sketch below was of one of the secondary walkways leading back towards the main entrance in the exotic garden.