l'Hermitage Garden

This guide to l'Hermitage Garden in Casablanca follows the artist Hassan Darsi, who grew up walking this French-planted horticultural showcase and watched its spring choke and its paths crumble by the early two thousands, until he built a miniature copy of the ruin out of scavenged trash in his studio. It traces the April two thousand three exhibition at the Villa des Arts, where his model went on public display alongside a petition from residents living around the real, decaying park. Within two weeks the city sent in roughly two thousand truckloads to start hauling out the garbage.