A winding stone path leads down to a long, shady iron pergola draped in wisteria and twisting jasmine, where Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa, the creative force behind all this romance, is sipping a pink martini. Elegant and dashingly handsome, Ruspoli casts an eye over Olinto Atlas Mountain Retreat, his eight-acre (and expanding) garden estate. Shimmering olive trees underplanted with fragrant floriferous white Atlas rose bushes encircle an expansive pool. A walkway below us cuts through swaying, luminous Pennisetum grasses punctuated by sculptural giant agaves and supersize succulents. As we begin to wander, drinks in hand, Ruspoli points out a building in the process of being repainted; the celadon green he’d originally chosen turned out not to be precisely the shade he had envisioned. It’s this sort of attention to detail, along with flawless taste, that has turned his dream into a living and growing idyll.
I’ve come to this High Atlas retreat in Marigha, an hour south of Marrakech, after a tip from Polly Nicholson, an author and specialist in historic tulips. A month earlier she had messaged me excitedly during her stay to tell me that interesting horticultural goings-on were afoot here. But just three years ago, this landscape, set against the snowcapped peaks of Toubkal National Park, was nothing more than a dusty olive tree farm.
Ruspoli, born into a noble Roman family, part of which later decamped to Paris, tells me that Olinto was a reaction to the controlled formality and grandeur of the Italian and French gardens he’d grown up with. It was inspired more by the great English gardens, like Sissinghurst Castle, which were designed as a series of intimate, exuberantly planted garden rooms. “The eye should always have something to discover,” he says.
Olinto makes only subtle nods to traditional Islamic gardens, with its quatrefoil pools dotted with water lilies and surrounded by banks of fragrant rosemary and neatly clipped evergreens. And yet Ruspoli always knew his garden had to be in Morocco. As a child he frequently visited his grandmother at her home in Tangier. Entranced by the culture and craft of Morocco, he opened Marrakech’s first riad hotel, La Maison Arabe, in 1998. A former antiques dealer, he hadn’t intended to be a hotelier, but over the course of two decades, his trailblazing property slowly expanded to include 32 rooms and suites, two restaurants, a spa, a pool, a cooking school, and a country club. Ruspoli, gradually wearying of the frenetic buzz of the city, started looking for a rural outpost where he could find more peace and space. He eventually alighted on this spot in the Ouirgane valley resplendent with pines, cypress, eucalyptus, and thousands of century-old olive trees.
Over a dinner of caramelized fennel and aromatic beef tagine, Ruspoli tells me how a local ironworker built the circular gazebo we’re sitting under, which is based on a sketch he made on a piece of paper. (He took a similar design approach to almost everything he has created here.) “We kept asking if he was sure the gazebo would stay up,” he says, only half joking. As we wander the winding paths under the light of a full moon, he points out hundreds of irises brought here from a friend’s garden nearby. But most of the plants have been sourced from local nurseries in the Ourika valley or grown from seeds or cuttings. In one dry area there are long beds of Kalanchoe marnieriana, a fleshy succulent native to Madagascar that produces vivid coral red blooms at Christmas.
Over the next few days, my mind quiets. A stream rushes through Olinto’s four ponds. The acanthus, silvery artemisia, and echium vibrate with bees. Towering bamboo, ribbons of purple-flowering Iris germanica, and red-leaved cannas add contrast and texture. The setting sun illuminates the palms, the pomegranate and fig trees, and the glowing scarlet bottlebrush flowers of a Melaleuca viminalis tree. In the clear pools, turtles and carp mingle. An occasional shy mongoose takes cover amid the nodding Colocasias and glossy water lilies. Sweeping fields of lavender and oleander and more glowing grasses line the eastern perimeter. It’s rare to encounter other guests, except before dinner at the rooftop bar, where we all watch the sun slowly descend behind the distant mountains.
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