Garden & Kitchen Garden

The structure of the Riad

Axes, flowerbeds, a basin, shaded walks. Water organises the path; trees mark time. One does not cross the garden as a backdrop: one enters it, walks it, learns to see slowly.

The chahar bagh — a diagram, not an ornament

The Islamic garden is not a vegetal décor: it is a cosmology set in the earth. And its origin is not Arab, but Persian.

Root and name

The Greek word paradeisos (παράδεισος) — the origin of our “paradise” — comes from the Old Persian pairi-daēza (“circular enclosure”, an Avestan term whose original cuneiform script has no modern typographic equivalent — it is therefore left in Latin transcription). From the Achaemenid period onward (Pasargadae, 6th century BCE), and especially under the Sassanids, the garden was already the image of the cosmos and of royal power: water, trees, geometry, closure toward the outside.

Islam does not erase this model: it absorbs and theologises it. The Quran evokes the gardens of paradise crossed by rivers; Persian architecture gives it its concrete form.

The classical structure

Four equal sectors; two crossing axes of water — the four rivers; at the centre, a basin, a pavilion or a fisqiya (فسقية); walls or porticoes that close the gaze toward the interior; an ordered vegetation, between shade, scent and utility. This is not a natural landscape: it is a diagram — order, measure, continuity of water, separation from the chaos outside.

One form, several worlds

The Andalusian and Maghrebi synthesis

In al-Andalus, the Persian chahār bāgh (چهار باغ) is not copied to the letter: it is reinterpreted. The great water axes remain — the Generalife, the Patio de la Acequia. The ground-level fisqiya and the low channels almost become its signature — the Alcázar of Seville, the Alhambra. Water enters even into the rooms, as at the Zisa in Palermo: the garden is no longer only a courtyard, but an extension of the architecture. In the Maghreb, the riad's patio keeps the same logic on a domestic scale: a centre of water, sectors, an enclosure, a coolness.

Thus: the geometry and symbolism of the four rivers come from Persia; the low fisqiya, the channel that extends into the room, and the enclosed patio of the riad are, in turn, the fruit of the encounter with Andalusian and Maghrebi taste.

What remains essential

The enclosure — the garden is a world apart. Flowing water — never stagnant, never spectacular in height. Cross geometry — the four sectors, the four rivers. Shade and measure — not the open, Western-style lawn.

For the Riad, this means that the patio and the garden are not a “green border”: they are the traditional form, of Persian and Andalusian heritage, where order, water and silence educate the eye and the body — the same logic that connects Dar al-Hiraf, the prayers and the rhythm of the house.

Water → · Patio →

The main garden

Shared space of the house. Citrus, shrubs and aromatics structure the shade and the scent there. It is the most visible face of the riyad.

The plants

Citrus

Bitter orange trees, lemon trees, sometimes bergamot. Shade, blossom scent, fruit for the table and orange blossom water.

Myrtle (arrayán)

Myrtus communis. Emblem of Andalusian and Maghrebi gardens. Dense foliage, discreet flower, ritual and ornamental use.

Jasmine

White jasmine and night jasmine. The scent of evening, linked to the tradition of inner courtyards.

Pomegranate & fig tree

Trees of Mediterranean memory. Fruit, shade, symbolic presence in Arab culture.

Cypress

Verticality, silence, boundary. They mark the axes and protect the privacy of the spaces.

The kitchen garden

Seasonal vegetables, herbs, a few fruit trees. The kitchen garden feeds the table of the house and forms those who live there: sowing, watering, harvesting, respecting the earth's time.