Visit to the Majorelle Gardens, Marrakesh

GARDEN DESIGN IDEAS
The Majorelle Gardens are probably best known worldwide for one colour – a fabulous dark cobalt blue that has become associated with fashionable gardening…but of course there is more to the garden than an aspirational paint swatch!

The garden is in the city of Marrakesh in the centre of Morocco. You enter through a gateway in the high wall that leads from the hot, bustling, dusty street. The contrast is what makes the impact. This garden is a sophisticated oasis in a very African city. A perfect retreat from the heat of the day with cool walks, pergolas, deep green foliage, surreal cacti, tall palms, thickets of stripey yellow and green bamboo…. and that blue colour, glimpsed again and again along with splashes of orange, yellow, and turquoise from painted pots.

The garden is memorable for the shape, form and texture of the planting, and for the shade…the intense sunlight creates a latticework of shadows cast by palms, thickets of bamboo and plant covered pergolas. There are dense blocks of green planting and vivid splashes of colour from bougainvillea and plumbago. You are surrounded by strong graphic shapes and silhouettes made by agave and other spiny cacti – and everywhere glimpses of the extraordinary primary colours, including that famous blue, which form a perfect backdrop to simplicity of the planting.

Jean Marjorelle was a French artisit and plant collector who created the garden beside his studio in the early 1920´s. Yves St Laurent took over the garden, opening it to the public in 1962 after the painters death.

Open daily, all year.