The Gardens of Umberto Pasti: Tebarek Allah in Tangier and the Wild Garden of Rohuna

Who is Umberto Pasti?

Umberto Pasti came to Tangier from Italy as a young man and never really left. He is a novelist and essayist first, and a gardener and collector second, but in northern Morocco his gardens are what people know him for. He collects tiles, old textiles, carved wood and pottery, and he collects plants with the same passion: ferns, begonias, irises, narcissi and, above all, the wild flowers of the Tangier region.

His idea of a garden is simple. It should be made with honesty and with love, and it is about plants and people more than design. You feel that in both of his gardens. Nothing is stiff, nothing is there only for show, and the people who work in them are part of the story.

Tebarek Allah: a house and garden above Tangier

Tebarek Allah is Pasti’s home on the slopes of the Old Mountain, the green hill west of the medina where the old villas of Tangier hide behind high walls. The name is an Arabic exclamation, something like “blessed be God”, the words a Moroccan says in front of something beautiful.

The garden is a maze of small rooms joined by narrow paths. Roses and jasmine scent the way, begonias grow under quince, peach and apricot trees, giant ferns lean over the paths, and a huge brunfelsia flowers purple and white. Old clay jars stand everywhere, many of them green with moss, and arched doors open from the house straight into the planting.

The house of a collector

Inside, the house is as full as the garden. Pasti has gathered rare tiles, textiles from Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, carved wooden pieces saved from old buildings, ceramics and Moroccan objects of every kind. Statues sit next to turquoise glazed jars, and tasselled cloths hang over painted chests. He tells the story of the house in his book The House of a Lifetime, published in 2023.

Tebarek Allah is a private home, not a museum, so you cannot simply turn up at the gate. Private visits to the house and the garden are possible by appointment, and I take care of the request and all the arrangements for my guests.

Rohuna: a garden made to save wild plants

Rohuna is the other side of Pasti’s work. Around the turn of the century he started to buy land on a hillside high above the Atlantic, south of Tangier near the village of Rohuna. The land belonged to more than twenty small owners, and he bought it piece by piece. Today the garden covers about five hectares.

The reason for Rohuna was urgent. As Tangier grew, with new roads, a bigger airport, ports and housing, the wild hills around the city were scraped away, and with them the bulbs and flowers that grew nowhere else. Pasti and his team began to dig plants out of building sites before the bulldozers arrived and replant them at Rohuna. Thousands of bulbs were saved this way, including narcissi from land taken for the airport extension.

The Wild Garden

The heart of Rohuna is the Wild Garden, a hillside of native plants that looks almost untouched. Here you find the plants of the Tangier peninsula: Iris tingitana, the iris of Tangier, Iris filifolia and Iris planifolia, the sea daffodil Pancratium maritimum, wild narcissi, Acis tingitana, rock roses, euphorbias, thyme, strawberry trees and evergreen oaks. In spring the slope turns blue, white and yellow.

For me this is the most important part of the place. It is a living record of a landscape that is disappearing fast, kept by people who know every plant by its local name.

The rooms around the houses

• The Garden of Consolation: terraces and rooms between two small houses, watered all year so that something is always in flower.
• Imagined gardens: rooms with invented owners, such as the Garden of the Portuguese and the Garden of the Englishman, each with its own mood and plants.
• Tiled benches: seats covered in fragments of old tiles from Seville, Tunis and Fez, set among succulents and ferns.
• Plants from afar: agaves from Mexico, sansevierias from Madagascar and clivias from South Africa, which grow well in the mild coastal climate.
• Local fruit: old varieties of fig, peach and apricot from the region, collected before they are lost.

A garden for the village too

Rohuna was built with the people around it. Hundreds of local workers built the track, the stone walls, the terraces and the houses, and many still work there. A deep well was dug, and its water also serves the neighbouring villages, where women once walked kilometres to fetch water. There is a small school on the site.

The garden is now becoming a foundation, so that it can continue after its creator. It receives support from the foundation that runs the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech.

Visiting the two gardens

Yes, you can visit both gardens. They are private and open only by appointment, so the visit has to be arranged in advance. I take care of that for you: I request the appointments for Tebarek Allah in Tangier and for Rohuna, and plan the day so you can see both.

Rohuna is open to visitors by appointment only, and a few thousand garden lovers come each year. The last part of the road is a rough track, so visitors usually leave the car below and walk up or are driven in a four by four. It takes around an hour and a half by road from Tangier. Wear good shoes, bring water and a hat, and allow at least two hours.

The best time is spring, from February to May, when the bulbs and irises flower and the hills around are green. Autumn is quieter but still beautiful after the first rains. Summer is dry, and the Wild Garden rests.

If you love gardens, look at my Morocco garden tour, a private journey through the gardens and culture of Morocco, from Tangier to Fez and the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech. I can also add Tebarek Allah and Rohuna to any private tour of the north, together with Tangier, Asilah and Chefchaouen.

Before you go

Pasti has written about Rohuna in his books, among them Eden Revisited, published in 2019, with photographs of the garden through the seasons. Reading it before your visit helps you understand what you are looking at, because many of the most precious plants are small and easy to walk past.