The great door opens to an orchard of apricot, lemon and olive trees. It looks like a palace, "riad" really doesn't do it justice and one walks through to an entrance straight from the baroque glories of Rome with an entrance lined with pillars and the statue of a goddess. Brilliantly conceived the pillars are actually cut short so that the person entering thinks that the statue is larger than it actually is. The courtyard and the palms are enchanting. Climbing the stairs and passing the swimming pool in the shape of a Mirhab or Moroccan door with a magnificent mosaic on the pool floor of the secret garden by Vanessa Vreeland. The glass door opens and Ambassador Freck and Vanessa Vreeland are there to greet me.

Freck Vreeland had a long and remarkable career in the diplomatic service of the United States starting as an operations officer in the CIA from 1951 to 1985. He was a political officer in Paris ( 1971-78) and then Rome. He served at the US Mission to the United Nations (1967-71). He accompanied Jackie Kennedy on an official visit to Morocco in 1963 and his first posting to Morocco was as Economic Officer at the US Embassy in Rabat. He was a member of the National Security Council at the White House during the Kennedy Presidency in 1963 and also served in Bonn and Berlin and the US Mission to the European Office (1952 -1957).

He reflects that he had the privilege to serve under President Kennedy and each one of his posts was a sheer delight always fascinating hard work. Geneva when he was working with the UN, the excitement of Berlin at the end of the 50's when it was under threat of invasion by Russia. He lost his heart to Morocco when he was first assigned here in the 60's. The US Mission at the UN where he went straight after the seven days war as the specialist on Middle East Affairs for four years. One of the 6 Ambassadors he served in that period was President Bush Senior and they became friends. In Paris he met Vanessa and they have been very much together ever since. After Paris they came Rome where they still spend much of their time and Vanessa has a studio as she does in Marrakech.

He was appointed by President George Bush Senior as Ambassador to Burma but in the congressional hearing for his appointment he courageously spoke out regarding Burma's human rights record and Burma retaliated by refusing to accept his appointment. He reflects sadly that it is 20 years since Aung San Su Kuyi won the election and she has been denied the opportunity of running this wonderful country in anyway and is still imprisoned by the junta and the Burmese people he regards as highly educated and the situation is truly tragic.

He also had a distinguished writing career as a contributing editor and writer for Condé Nast Traveller Magazine, his mother having been a famous editor of Vogue Magazine. Together with Vanessa his wife he co-authored "Key to Rome" a cultural historical guide published by the Getty Museum which Freck describes as a popular and fine scholarly work. They invented the concept of instead of organising the guide by areas; it is compiled by the many eras of Roman civilisation. Their main residence is still Rome.

He was also the senior co-author of Rome Access published by Harper Collins. This guide book won the silver medal for tourism from the City of Rome. He and Vanessa spend their time in Rome when not in Marrakech. He received his degree at Yale in 1951.

He is a member of the Order of St John and has an honorary degree as Doctor of Humane Letters from John Cabot University in Rome of which he was Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for many years and remains a Trustee. He was director of the Aspen Institute in Italy 1985-1987.This is a think tank which specialised in the Mediterranean area and achieved pioneering work on the concept of Euro Maghreb relations which has now seen the creation of Euromed agreement and Morocco's special status with the EU.

It was a great joy to be appointed to Morocco which he knew well, amongst friend who had risen to be Ministers. It was challenging to meet with His Late Majesty King Hassan II. He tried to influence him on solar energy and democracy. On democracy he said to the King that each country had to adopt its own version of democracy and he quoted Churchill saying that democracy was a very bad system but it was the best we had. His Majesty was amused!

Freck pays tribute to the reforms of King Mohammed VI in terms of democracy and women's rights and putting the emphasis on human as well as economic development.

He is chairman of a solar energy company in Marrakech, NoorWeb. Noor means light in both the spiritual and physical sense. NoorWeb is a rural energy services company that has installed and maintains over 6,000 solar home systems in the region of Taroudant in Southern Morocco. It uses small local enterprises, called Dar Noors, to provide maintenance and sales of solar equipment including solar powered tools that will provide financial benefits for new solar power micro-enterprises, solar hot water heaters and solar electric systems. All was put to spectacularly good use in the building of "The Orchard of the Shooting Stars". The name of the house refers to the shooting stars in the sky they used to see which have now disappeared , perhaps due to atmospheric pollution.

Although it looks as if it has been there for a very long time, every single thing was built form the ground up there was absolutely nothing there, he recalls. This was a part of the Palmeraie which was totally empty, just the odd Palm tree and nothing else. Therefore they could afford to buy two hectares and which they did at the end of the 1970's. Vanessa adds that so much of the Palmeraie was Habous which meant that it wasn't for sale. They wanted to have a house in town and thought about two little riads with a swimming pool in one of them. However each time they went to buy the owner would double the price and they realised he was just testing us to see how much the riad would fetch on the market. Nobody was buying properties in the medina then in 1975 or 1978.

In the last part of the 70's they started looking around an they wanted to be where the action was, but as Vanessa said, none of the now 600 riads as there are now, was owned by a European. The idea that a Moroccan family would sell its riad didn't cross their minds and they found it was impossible. and also we would have wanted one large enough to have a swimming pool and live in the other riad, So they started looking for land in La Palmarie and in those days the Habous owned a very large part of the it .After great difficulty they found the famous Caid Ladayi, who owned the Palais Ladayi in the Medina, his son had inherited this large piece of land and he had never sold anything but he agreed to sell them two hectares and they chose a part of the land which they could afford as the price was low enough and there was nothing was nothing there but six palm trees and sand with some obnoxious tree stumps dotted around which they determined to get rid of.