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– This chapter is a contribution to the book A Guide of Ornamental Plants in Egypt [temporary title].
Update: Work on hold because / since the Egyptian revolution... :)
The garden Najla al-Maghraby sprang up from a mango field in the rural suburbs of Cairo. The land was purchased in 1980 in Mansuriya with, from the beginning, the idea of creating a garden there. However, the owner did not then envisage the shape and size that will take the garden later, nor its botanical collection nature it has today. It should had been “only” the counterpart of an urban life: the owner was resident in Zamalek, an urbanized bourgeois island, Downtown Cairo, the capital of which life and atmosphere were taking more and more the appearance of those of a megalopolis.
A. The history of Mansuriya garden.
- Its creation from a field of mango trees.
- The three stages of its enlargement.
- Its transformation into a villa garden (residential relocation).
- Its pioneering role as a post-Nasserist revival of villa garden.
- The running of the garden today.
B. The landscape design of the garden.
- To become a collector’s garden of exotic plants (acclimatization and introductions).
- Ostentation or discretion? The intended and experienced use.
- The closure of the space or “various small gardens.”
C. Inspirations and motivations explained today by Najla al-Maghraby.
- To create his own “small paradise.”
- To bring the world back to himself.
- A bubble out of Egypt in Egypt.
