09/08/2024
Treehouses
How did Diane come up with the idea of building treehouses on the Côte d'Azur?
During her years in Singapore, the Malay houses, built on stilts and set in large compounds surrounded by lush greenery, must have left a lasting impression. Seeing the land and the forest bordering it likely brought back some of those memories. A picture of a treehouse in Kerala, India, was the spark that ignited the project.
When Diane and her partner bought the property and moved to Saint-Paul with her two daughters, she wanted to make the place even more attractive by installing an organic swimming pool, with the promise of attracting dragonflies and small water creatures. The pool helped create the microclimate that makes Orion so special.
Do you want to know how the treehouse names Bagheera, Shere Khan, King Louie, Mowgli, and Colonel Hathi were chosen? They are all characters from Rudyard Kipling's *The Jungle Book*. As many former Orion guests can attest, Diane loves to narrate her adventures in the jungles of Colombia, where she lived with a remote tribe of Indians, the Motilones. Be sure to ask her about it when you are at Orion.