This is the final Nick's Garden of 2010 and as the year's end approaches I can't help but take stock of the past 12 months, a period that has been full of change for both my home and garden.
When I started writing this column last February I was working full time as a designer of major landscapes throughout the UAE and my interest in plants and gardening was as much professional as personal. I'm now ending the year as a first-time parent and stay-at-home dad and, for the first time in a decade, gardens and plants are no longer the tools of my trade but have reassumed their primary role as places of beauty and sources of pure delight. It's with this pleasure principle in mind that two landscapes immediately stand out as particularly happy memories and important sources of inspiration for the coming year.
Every now and again my wife and I will visit a garden or landscape whose qualities are so self-evident that it strikes us like a form of déjà vu. Normally my wife will comment on it before I do and when we leave we do so eager to return. The last time this happened was at Robert Irwin's subtly restrained and elegant landscape surrounding the Dia:Beacon art gallery in the Hudson River valley in upstate New York, not an easy place to revisit from the UAE.
Luckily a similarly refined experience awaits visitors to Manarat Al Saadiyat, the recently opened visitor centre on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. When I first arrived at the visitor centre, I thought that it might be the contrast with the phalanx of large red, white and blue billboards lining the entrance that made the arrivals landscape seem so serene, but repeated visits have confirmed otherwise. Although it still needs time to become established, the real pleasure in this garden comes from the ways in which in its designers, the Dubai-based landscape designers Alshamsi Terra Firma, have managed to create a richly detailed and contemporary landscape from a humble palette of concrete blocks, cobbles and kerbs and readily available, low water-demand plants. What's most satisfying is the way that it encourages the visitor to reconsider the quiet stuff that surrounds them and to see the potential in materials that would otherwise be considered ubiquitous and mundane.
Gardeners can learn a lesson here in simplicity as well as the benefits of using a carefully selected, restricted palette in all things. The effect of seemingly ordinary plants is also maximised by their use in generous, single-species blocks which emphasises their textural and structural characteristics.
If the landscape at Manarat Al Saadiyat represents a form of austere, low-cost chic then the landscape that greets visitors to the Armani Hotel Dubai at the Burj Khalifa is horticultural haute couture and a very guilty pleasure indeed. When viewed from inside Mr Armani's Dubai bolt-hole, the expensive stone paving, established trees and muted planting scheme co-ordinate perfectly with the opulent silks, velvets and hi-tech fabrics that are used so skilfully inside. As with the buildings and garden at Manarat, this is an object lesson in the effect that can be achieved when a building's interior and exterior are closely co-ordinated.
At Manarat Al Saadiyat this effect is achieved through the use of floor-to-ceiling glazing and an outdoor paving finish that flows inside the building to break down the distinction between interior and exterior. The links at the Armani Hotel are less obvious, relying instead on similarities in colour, texture and a richness of detail and quality of finish. Paving takes on the quality of woven fabric while interior floor coverings perform with architectural simplicity.
While the planting at Manarat Al Saadiyat makes a virtue of the chosen species' ubiquity, the use of a restricted colour palette in the planting at the foot of the Armani Hotel is even more muted as the silver leaves of mature olive trees blend seamlessly with the glaucous foliage of different varieties of Agave. If anything, the effect is a little too subdued because the quality of the planting is lost unless it's repaid with anything less than a detailed inspection from above. However, given that this garden stands at the foot of the world's tallest building there's surely more chance of this happening here than elsewhere.
If anything, the lesson to be learnt from the Burj Khalifa is the risk that even the world's best take when they try to be too tasteful. The design, by the renowned US landscape designers SWA Group, is clearly a bravura performance but for me it almost doesn't come off as the overall impression is of a landscape that is a little too well-mannered. Still, having two local landscapes to teach us such beautiful and useful lessons so eloquently is something that we should be grateful for. Happy new year.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
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Read more about the coronavirus
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Revibe%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Hamza%20Iraqui%20and%20Abdessamad%20Ben%20Zakour%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Refurbished%20electronics%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410m%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFlat6Labs%2C%20Resonance%20and%20various%20others%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH INFO
Chelsea 4 (Mount 18',Werner 44', Hudson-Odoi 49', Havertz 85')
Morecambe 0
What is tokenisation?
Tokenisation refers to the issuance of a blockchain token, which represents a virtually tradable real, tangible asset. A tokenised asset is easily transferable, offers good liquidity, returns and is easily traded on the secondary markets.
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
