mountain stage

Traditionally we are heading for the moutains on the last Green Gardens workshop day.

On our way we visit the most colorful and inspirational botanical location. In terms of color and originality, it's my favorite of all gardens.

To stay in the color theme, the next garden in the row, Anima Garden, fully gratifies a bright color explosion. Anima Art garden is a imaginative botanical staging with sumptuous trees and sculptures. Here too, inspiration is everywhere. We pick some blossoms and leaves for the herbarium, have a drink in the cafe and get in our minibus for the last part of the trip.

When we cross the Ourika river, we pay a short visit to the local weekly market. A really great market, where I could walk around for hours.

On arrival at our final destination for the rest of the day, we have a delicious lunch, overlooking the red valley of Kasbah Bab Ourika. Plenty to enjoy at this magical place! The most beautiful vegetable garden with breathtaking views of the Atlas Mountains. And I realized this was my 15th visit to this Kasbah Bab Ourika, the magical views remain as special and enchanting as the first time.

high atlas traditions

Roadtrip to the Atlas Mountains. Destination Kasbah Bab Ourika. Cool crochet project on a higher level, literly.

After arrival we first have a super delicious lunch with an amazing view on the red valley. Actually, you're not going to get it any better and later on you just want to relax in the beautiful garden or to swim, laze and crochet...

According to a cc workshop tradition, we bring the big wool baskets on our roadtrip to the mountains, to make a cover for the xs woodwoolstools. Better known as suitcase size stool, because everyone can bring it home in the suitcase 'easily'.

At the end of the day I'm always amazed, how different all the handmade stool covers turned out. Love to see how every stool has it's own style in whatever way, using the same pattern. However, we completely forgot to take a group photo with our covered mini stools.

Kasbah Bab Ourika days are simply the best to end a wonderful workshop week full of adventures with cheerful, creative and lovely women.  

botanical, artistic & altitude gardens

Although it already seems ages ago, since we drove with our gardens group to the mountains, I would like to share a photo report of our second last day of the workshop.

In the morning we went to the impressive botanical garden, just outside of Marrakech. I can assure you it almost feels frustrating, because you want to take home so many plants, knowing that it is impossible. Just bring home a few cuttings would already be nice...
The amount of plants, the colors, the gigantic size of the garden, the diversity and abundance of flowers, trees, plants, cacti, make you feel like walking around in the plant paradise! You just don't want to leave this place, but we had to continue with the program and went via a rural route to the Atlas mountains and drove along fields full of poppies. Spring everywhere!

Before we went into the mountains, we made a stop at the Anima art garden. The garden, created by André Heller, is so colorful, surprising and so very different from all the places we went on our Green Gardens tour this week. After coffee and austrian cake in the cafe we continued our trip to the Ourika river and we visited the weekly local market.

When we arrived at our final destination of the day, Kasbah Bab Ourika, it was already pretty cloudy, but we were lucky to make a (vegetable) garden tour and have lunch on the terrace, before it started to rain.

We decided to have our desserts at the fireplace and had a wonderful afternoon despite the bad weather.
It was the first time that I have experienced so much rain in April in Morocco in all those years.
Well it did not spoil the fun, but I would have loved to give the participants the sight of the snowy mountains with bright blue sky, like the week before with the Cool Crochet workshop.

Even after my departure (when we had sunny spring weather in the Netherlands), it was still cold and wet in Marrakech, which is unusual for this time of year in North Africa.

The GG workshop was therefore the greenest sofar...

This was the last 'moroccan vibes' blogpost until October, thank you all for following our adventures!