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A GARDEN AND MOTEL IN WADI BANI AUF

Written by Nicola Shipway and photographed by Herbert Fernandes

The road from Nakhl to Al Awabi runs alongside a wadi past rocks the colour of burnt umber. Aside from odd bushes and tussocks of blonde grass, it is a barren landscape, imposing but austere, which makes arriving at Mohamed Abdulla Gharib al Awfy’s leafy garden all the more rewarding.

The garden encircles Mohamed’s Tourist Village Resort Motel, which lies just beyond Al Awabi up a bumpy track off the highway. A large, brightly painted sign is the only signal for visitors that the hotel exists. The garden itself is enclosed by open wire fencing, although the plants seem averse to containment; they clamber over fence posts and poke through the holes in the wire, urged on by Mohamed, who says he hopes one particular group of young bougainvilleas will grow into a wall of colour by next year. Colour is a hallmark of this exuberant garden. In place of symmetry are flowing lines, unexpected features and exciting juxtapositions. Mohamed’s own ebullience seems to pervade the garden, which he wants his guests to savour as much as he does. “I like people to enjoy themselves,” he proclaims expansively. “I love the flowers and the trees. I never get tired of sitting under the trees – I never get tired of climbing the trees. When I was a boy we used to climb the trees like Tarzan.”

Mohamed was born in Zanzibar and studied in Cairo, Poland and England. His garden was begun in 1993, “which His Majesty Sultan Qaboos declared the Year of Heritage,” he recalls. “I was inspired to create something contrary to what they build in the cities. Instead of modern buildings, I wanted to make something ecological.” Today, the well-stocked garden is scattered with constructions made from traditional stone and timber, with barasti roofs. There are four double bedrooms for guests, each with a terrace; a larger room, hung with carpets, for groups to share; and a half-built miniature stage that will soon be used for dancing shows to entertain visitors.

Throughout the garden, the planting is generous and informal. Undulating beds delineated with large stones are packed with all manner of specimens. There are abundant citrus trees, including sweet limes, lemons, tangerines and oranges, all sheltering fledgling fruits; and date palms hung with plump, browning dates. Clumps of sugar cane jostle alongside stands of feathery, violet-plumed grass, grapevines, bananas, oleanders and succulents, and mangoes of Indian, African and Omani origin. Rose bushes are starry with claret or white flowers that in the mountains are used to make rosewater. Shade is provided by trees – tamarinds (Tamarindus indica), the golden shower tree (Cassia fistula) and Manihot esculenta (from which tapioca is derived) – many of them with trunks daubed ghostly white with quicklime to deter pests; while plants such as frangipani and jasmine scent the air as the day cools and darkens. The effect is of teeming vitality.

All this horticultural bounty is watered twice daily with water pumped from a well on Mohamed’s land. The round, green swimming pool is refilled every 24 hours from the same source. Additional pools are planned, as are another six bedrooms near a border currently occupied by two trees underplanted with shrubs. “Here are two friends challenging each other,” notes Mohamed fondly. “Eventually one of them will surrender. When I see one is beaten, I will take it out.” Elsewhere in the garden are a cluster of succulents – dubbed “the society of cactuses” – and spiky Aloe vera, the sap of which Mohamed once used to cure a friend who had a nail in his foot. Other things harvested from the garden end up in the kitchen or are generously pressed upon departing guests. Here there are no professional gardeners, says Mohamed, “just waterers. And I am the designer.”

You can call the Tourist Village Resort Motel at 99 214873.