Garden Structures – Riad

Riads (the word means garden in Arabic) are to be found all over Morocco, but particularly in Marrakesh. They are houses that look completely unostentatious; may have small doorways and no balconies, in fact there may not even be any windows on the house wall that overlooks the street, but step through the doorway and you find an incredible transformation - these are houses built around one or more courtyards and you find you have entered a world of fountains, arched colonnades, intricate stucco carving and brightly coloured tiles.

Riads are cloistered sanctuaries in which life is turned away from the outside world and inwards to a central space – a way of living that we can aspire to today, as our busy working lives and long stressful days make us seek out any opportunity for calm and reflection. Usually a riad contains a large patio area, often with a fountain and palm trees. The fountain may be replaced by a ‘tank’ which is actually a deep tiled pond, normally up to four feet deep, with areas around the edge to sit and dabble your feet in the water while drinking mint tea. Sometimes a riad is built as a roof terrace with lemon, olive, mandarin and other citrus trees. Eucalyptus and oleander often reach for the sky in these courtyards, dotted among the orange and lemon trees in pots.

Build your own riad by planting trees in large terracotta containers, placed on wheeled platforms so you can move them easily in bad weather. Hang thin cotton dividers between pillars, or if you don’t have pillars, use timber framing to make an arch or pergola to provide some shade and mystery and hang your bright cotton from that. Zellij tiles are hard to find in the UK, but any bright glazed tile can be used to decorate your walls, giving an air of the riad to a British garden – look for shades of terracotta, deep green and pink, as these are common colours in the zellij style, and geometric patterns, birds, deer and fountains are common motifs.

Garden riad photograph by Giustino, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

 

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