Plants and gardens may be Kamelia Bin Zaal’s passion, but for the creative landscape director behind the UAE’s most verdant billionaire’s row, everything starts and ends with her family.
“Al Barari is all about our family,” she explains. “We’ve travelled the world together, but we never found a house that we liked, so we ended up designing our own home. We’ve taken inspiration from everywhere we’ve been.”
Bin Zaal is the eldest daughter of the property developer/entrepreneur Zaal Mohammed Zaal, the man behind the Al Barari (“wilderness” in Arabic) development in Dubai.
The Dh15 billion development and residential community features 189 multi-million-dirham villas surrounded by more than 16 kilometres of landscaped lakes, streams and cascades, 34 themed gardens and more than four million plants.
“Al Barari was actually not born out of the villas; it was born out of plants,” Bin Zaal explains. “The initial concept for Al Barari was to start a nursery and develop plant production, because my father’s heart lies with plants. He thought that there must be like-minded people out there who appreciate their environment, not just internally but externally as well.”
Born in Dubai, Bin Zaal grew up in the United Kingdom and studied garden design at London’s Inchbald School of Design.
Nine years later, Bin Zaal has a dedicated team of landscape designers, plus Greenworks, Al Barari’s own commercial plant nursery. Now, she’s overseeing the final stages of landscape design for Al Barari’s second phase, which will add luxury apartments to the desert wilderness.
“My main role here is to creatively translate what my father wants into a beautiful design. I understand my dad and we work really well together.”
I always carry ...
A rose quartz stone. It’s a crystal and it’s full of positive love energy.
My favourite landscape
Honestly, it’s the desert. The desert here is so peaceful and quiet. I’m not intimidated by its emptiness.
My favourite destination
It depends on what I need. The Maldives [pictured] is where I go when I want to relax and completely unwind, but then I also like to travel and go on adventures. I’m hopefully going to Mongolia with Gulf for Good. It’s a Dubai-based charity that organises treks around the world and you get people to sponsor you to raise money for children. I’ve already been trekking in Borneo and I’ve climbed Kilimanjaro with them. It’s physically demanding, mentally demanding, you’re doing something for charity and at the same time you get to travel to places you’ve never been before.
My favourite read
I love One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.
My comfort food
Foqa. It’s a local dish. It’s made with rice and you can have it with meat or fish or chicken and spices. It’s like machboos or an Arabic take on biryani.
My favourite garden designer
Christopher Bradley-Hole. I like the simplicity of his designs and he also designed a beautiful show garden for Sheikh Zayed at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which I loved.
My hobby
Photography. Obviously there are lots of plants, but my pictures are usually nature-related. I take lots of pictures of landscapes, animals and water, usually when I’m on my travels.
My favourite plant
Bismarckia nobilis – it's a palm. The structure and the colour are majestic.
My favourite neighbourhood
Islington in London. I love the feel of the place – it has such a great buzz. There are lots of great one-off shops and furniture stores and I love [the restaurant] Ottolenghi. I stuff my face every time I go there. My best friend happens to live there as well.
I really miss ...
The change in seasons. We don’t get that here, but autumn and spring in England are really beautiful.
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