SPANISH LESSONS

For Emma Roig Askari and her family. paradise is an airy, light-miled haven overlooking the Mediterranean on the island of Ibiza

- MITCHELL OWENS

Her husband was adamant: The investment manager would accept any place for a vacation home other than Ibiza, the Spanish island known far and wide for its wild nightlife, hedonistic discotheques, and celebrity sightings. “We started with the Hamptons, then Greece, and then Mallorca, because he plays golf, and it has plenty of courses,” says his ebullient wife, Emma Roig Askari, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair Spain, a TV commentator for Atresmedia, and a Christie’s ambassador. Her secret weapon was simple: to take her recalcitrant husband to Ibiza offseason, “when the valleys are full of flowers and there’s beautiful sunlight. Little by little, he got interested.”

Three years of diligent searching later, the London-based couple and their relieved grown children—“They were so happy that we’d finally decided on something”—found a mountainside to call their own. There, with Rolf Blakstad of Blakstad Design Consultants, an esteemed Ibiza firm founded in the 1950s, they began to build a dream house overlooking the sea and inspired by the island’s laid-back traditional style. What eventually emerged was a low, rambling white residence with enough bedrooms for family and friends and enough land to cultivate a garden of largely native Mediterranean plants, courtesy of British landscape guru Tania Compton, better known for her work at English country estates and being the contributing gardens editor of The World of Interiors, one of AD’s sister publications.

“As much as I love our house, the biggest pleasure is the garden,” Roig Askari says. “I’m a firm believer in the transcultural: Nothing is better than an expert from one country and culture working on a landscape in a completely different country.”