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Umberto Pasti arrived in Morocco 30 years ago. Once in the Kingdom, the passionate gardener and writer started one of his biggest projects. In Tangier he created Rohuna, a little piece of heaven that houses a variety of Moroccan plants.
Tangier had, indeed, inspired the Italian artist. «I fell asleep under a fig tree and had a strange dream, full of words whose relation to one another I didn’t understand: mouth, nasturtium, exedra, unicorn», he told the New York Times in 2016. Pasti woke up with the idea of building a garden in that area.
He did not forget about that dream since then. After a series of meetings, he managed to buy the land of his dreams.
His father, who died shortly before he arrived in Tangier, left him a descent amount of money and he used that to start his project. He was helped by the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. In total, he hired 600 people to make his dream come true.
Building a track, walls, three houses and transporting tons of arable land took him several years. Umberto Parti says that those years were rough and tiresome. But his objective kept him going. In fact, he wanted to save local plants species.
«Here wild plants grow — roughly 300 native species — from the magisterial Quercus ilex, the evergreen oak, to the minuscule Acis tingitana, and all the rock roses, euphorbia, helianthemum and thyme that made northern Morocco a paradise».
Saving local plants
20 years later, Rohuna remains one of the largest gardens in Morocco. It includes flowers, trees and eye catching plants, says House & Garden.
The garden houses «Clusters of roses, spiky agaves, scented lilies and exotic erythrinas, among hundreds of other plants», added the same source.
For Umberto Pasti, «a garden should be made with honesty and with love (...) a garden is all about the plants and the people, more than it is about design and aesthetics. It is real».
This project has greatly helped the local population. Before building the garden, the women of the village had to walk more than three kilometers to fetch water at a source. In his garden, Umberto Pasti dug a 90-meter well and let the inhabitants of the surrounding villages use it.
The garden to which Umberto Pasti dedicated his life inspired him when working on other projects. He wrote books that were translated to more than five languages. Thanks to him, the region and its typical vegetation are known internationally.
