German Landscape Architect Helps Green the Saudi Desert
German Landscape Architect Helps Green the Saudi Desert
A German landscape architect who has been working in Saudi Arabia for nearly 40 years, Richard Bödeker turns his wealthy clients’ dreams into reality. Over the decades he has shrugged off political concerns about the ultra-conservative country and played a key role in introducing green spaces to Riyadh.
In the Koran, paradise is often described as a garden, a tranquil place where trees provide shade and cool water flows though streams. Pretty much like the private farm belonging to Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abd al-Asis Al Saud, son of the Crown Prince and Minister of Defense of Saudi Arabia.
The 56-year-old’s home features an artistic water landscape in the middle of the desert just outside the capital, complete with a philosopher’s walk where he likes to stroll in the evening.
The prince is in high spirits. Dressed in a white thawb and a checkered ghutra, he sits at a long table surrounded by bougainvillea and anemones. Next to him in a place of honor is Richard Bödeker, who hails from Neandertal near Düsseldorf, Germany.
Clad in head-to-toe black, the landscape architect sports a beard and a twirled mustache. “Richard of Arabia,” as the Saudi princes like to call him, looks like an eccentric professor.
“How are you, Richard, my friend?” asks His Royal Highness. Bödeker sighs. Now 75, he has been fulfilling the extravagant wishes of his clients in Saudi Arabia for nearly 40 years.
Bödeker tugs at his beard. Princes and princesses come up with some fantastical ideas, he says, straight out of fairytales. And Bödeker is entrusted with turning these ideas into reality.