Marrakech has a long horticultural history, beginning in the 11th and 12th centuries with the channelling of snowmelt waters from the Atlas mountains to reservoirs and fountains, designed to water the city’s vast orchards and olive groves, as well as its mosques, public gardens and private courtyards.
Today, visitors to the low-rise desert city (no building is permitted to be higher than a palm tree) are often surprised by the neat, well-watered rows of smartly trimmed citrus trees, the cloud-pruned olives and mounds of clipped, sky-blue plumbago lining the teeming highways, which lead the way to gardens of perfumed roses, and curtains of pink, Pandorea jasminoides or gaudy bougainvilleas that cloak the high, ochre walls of the medina. Who has not heard of Jacques Majorelle’s 1930s garden, so famously rescued by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé and reimagined in all its exotic and cobalt-blue essence by Madison Cox for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1997?
French painter Jacques Majorelle poses in April 1946 in Marrakesh, in the garden of his property, which became the Majorelle garden after its purchase by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé in 1980.
Two other gardens have also attracted the curious in recent years: Le Jardin Secret, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, is a thoughtful, respectful riff on the traditional Islamic garden, as well as a joyful post-colonial reference to the city’s long history of horticultural innovation, whereas Anima — a 30-minute drive from the city — is the Austrian multi-media artist André Heller’s riotously colourful treasure chest of plants and artworks, designed to tease, please or possibly confuse the visitor, who ideally arrives at this extraordinary garden with an open mind.
There are private gardens, too, whispered about, but rarely seen. The French xeriscaping duo, Eric Ossart and Arnaud Maurières, have left their mark here; Madison Cox and Luciano Giubbilei are names discreetly attached to villas of dreamed-of luxury and Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli has transformed the gardens of his highly desirable hotel-retreat, Olinto, into a serene idyll of natural planting.
Into this heady and international mix of designers a new cast of characters has stepped and a wholly original garden of exceptional beauty has emerged. Helena Oswald and her husband, Lexi, are Swiss and Helena’s love of climbing took her to the Atlas mountains, where she attempted to persuade Lexi they should create a guest house in a remote village location. He was unconvinced and the couple eventually decided that a plot of scrubby farmland close to Marrakech would be a more suitable location on which to build a house for long escapes with family and friends — far from their working lives in Zurich. An architect was chosen and, in 2016, a clean-lined villa began to rise from the flat, red clay.
Meanwhile, at Son Muda on the island of Mallorca, a newly formed garden design team was discussing the possibility of making a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. ‘It was either that, or make a garden in Marrakech,’ says Hélène Lindgens, the Swiss founder of Son Muda. By coincidence, she had stayed at a riad in Marrakech owned by a friend of the Oswalds and was invited to fly out with her design partner, Hans Achilles, to discuss the idea of making a garden on the two-acre site that the Oswald’s house would occupy. ‘It was a bit like going on a blind date,’ Hélène remembers, ‘and Lexi was initially quite resistant to the idea of making a garden as well as a house, but over a few glasses of wine our friendship was sealed and, by three in the morning, we had the outline of a plan.’
A leaning date palm frames the bridge across a pond filled with water-lily hybrids, pontederia and papyrus, enjoyed from the Gin and Tonic Terrace.
Mr Achilles is a landscape architect by training and his first proposition was dramatic: the house, which had been designed to be west-facing, should be rotated through 90 degrees in order to align with the snow-capped Atlas mountains on the southern horizon. From this new orientation, the main axis of the garden — defined by a long rill and flanked by palms — would flow from the terrace, viewed seamlessly from the glass-fronted, central façade of the single-storey building. Gentle diplomacy prevailed and the new plan was adopted.
The flat and roughly square plot now had its principle axis, but Mr Achilles was anxious that the garden should not reveal itself immediately, but by degrees; it was equally important, he says, to create a sense of volume and movement. Mr Oswald, forthright as ever, insisted that he didn’t want to grow old (‘I’m already old!’) watching the garden slowly mature and his wife, for her part, insisted that white and pale pink were the only floral colours to be admitted, ‘it’s a Swiss thing, perhaps!’
The house opens onto a generous terrace shaded by citrus trees and overhung with pink Pandorea jasminoides; frogs leap among the papyrus in the bubbling pool.
Accordingly, the Oswalds were invited to select a score of century-old olives that would form a broad and shady avenue, crossing the central rill and effectively hiding the drama of the garden beyond. Here, a grid pattern of gravel paths is reinforced by long, low stripes of clipped myrtle, rosemary, duranta and silvery atriplex, softened by rows of white ‘Marrakech’ roses, dwarf pink gaura (now Oenothera lindheimeri) and Mexican daisies, Erigeron karvinskianus.
Eight plants that play key roles in the garden at Riad Nouria
- Syagrus romanzoffiana An elegant palm tree, native to Uruguay, crowned with graceful, pendulous fronds
- Washingtonia robusta The fast-growing, slender Mexican fan palm adds dramatic height to gardens where space allows
- Agave victoriae-reginae Named to honour Queen Victoria, this beautiful succulent has a sculptural quality, each leaf enhanced by a silvery outline
- Duranta erecta A bushy, evergreen shrub native to central America and the Caribbean. If left unclipped, small blue or white flowers are followed by yellow, bead-like berries
- Atriplex halimus A drought-resistant Mediterranean shrub, grown as fodder for sheep and goats in Morocco. The tough, silvery foliage responds neatly to clipping
- Muhlenbergia capillaris One of the most elegant grasses, its medium-height fine flowering stems have a soft, pinkish hue
- Bismarckia nobilis The giant silver, palmate fans lend a striking, sculptural quality to this palm, which is native to Madagascar
- Schinus molle Often seen lining the streets of Moroccan or cities in the southern Mediterranean, the Peruvian pepper tree rapidly develops a graceful, weeping habit
Such abstract formality is deliberately disturbed by the swaying heads of grasses: elegant, airy muhlenbergia and tall, silky-tasselled miscanthus. By contrast, rows of rigidly geometrical Corten-steel boxes, of differing heights and volumes, display to magnificent effect the sculptural forms of agaves, cacti and explosions of Yucca rostrata. Slender Washingtonia palms — again of varying heights — tower overhead and, turning back towards the house, it becomes apparent that the avenue of syagrus palms is far from uniform: some are single, others multi-stemmed, thus avoiding the regular, columnar effect a more obvious avenue of date palms, Phoenix dactylifera, might suggest.
The rill ends in a simple, square water-lily pool, semi-obscured by the leaning trunk of a collapsing date palm, one of the few trees originally growing on the plot. It is forbidden to cut down date palms in Morocco, so Mr Achilles has made a virtue of its appearance; you duck to pass beneath and discover that it introduces a simple bridge leading to the Gin and Tonic Terrace on the far side.
Twenty workers achieved the planting of this tour de force in two years, completing the garden in 2019 under the supervision of Mr Achilles, who has also trained a team of four gardeners from the local village to maintain the garden to Swiss standards of perfection. Underlying this perfection, however, are some vital principles that derive from Mrs Lindgens’s and Mr Achilles’s experience of water-wise gardening on Mallorca. Each plant is chosen for its tolerance to drought and the extremes of the local climate, where summer temperatures may rise to 50˚C and winter nights may drop briefly below 0˚C. A deep gravel mulch hides a drip irrigation system, used only when absolutely necessary. ‘We were fortunate to find the soil was deep and not too stony,’ says Mrs Lindgens, ‘and, being south of the city, the property has easier access to underground water as it’s closer to the Atlas mountains.’
The central axis is defined by a rill, lined with white plumbago and shaded by ele-gant Syagrus palms. The Atlas mountains shimmer through the distant pink haze.
As both the friendship and the garden have grown over the years, a new chapter is about to be written. The Oswalds have acquired an olive grove just across the road and have commissioned the pair to design a new villa and garden for them. Exhibiting at Chelsea will just have to be put on hold once again.
Find out more about the house and garden at the Sonmuda website.
Join the Country Life tour of Morocco's gardens
Join Kirsty Fergusson and garden historian Marion Mako on the Country Life tour to Marrakech in Morocco, from November 16–21, 2026. With dramatic views of the High Atlas mountains and its famously delicious cuisine, Marrakech welcomes visitors with a warmth shaped by 1,000 years of history. Known as ‘the rose among the palms’, Marrakech is characterised by its pink-coloured pisé architecture and its deep-rooted tradition of making and preserving gardens.
Our tour has been carefully designed to include a selection of wonderful visits, ranging from old palace gardens to those of modern private properties. Highlights include a visit to Villa Oasis, previously the home of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, where vibrant blue, lemon-yellow and lime-green glazed pots bring this most enchanting garden to life. We have also arranged a special visit to the gardens of Riad Nouria designed by Hélène Lindgens and Hans Achilles, a new and spectacular private garden in the foothills of the Atlas mountains, as described here. Also on the tour will be a visit to the famous Le Jardin Secret, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
You will stay at the luxurious La Maison Arabe, located in the heart of the ancient medina. The tour includes private lunches, exclusive access and guided visits to the souk, promising an unforgettable blendof horticulture and cultural discovery.
The five-night (six-day) tour for one person, with flights, costs £4,595; the single supplement is £395 and a deposit of £550is required. For further information andto book, please telephone 01280 430175 or see the Boxwood Tours website.
This feature appeared in the January 14, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to order a copy, or subscribe to the magazine.