BEAUTY & HOPE GROWS FROM DIRE DUST

“Given what these vulnerable youth have witnessed on their lengthy journeys, we should do everything in our power to provide them with shelter, food, healthcare and legal representation. But I would go a step further and also suggest a sense of beauty to help their emotional well-being be restored,” says Susan McPherson, of McPherson Strategies. McPherson serves on the board of USA for UNHCR, and supports numerous refugee causes.

People arrive at the camps, often with nothing more than the clothes on their bodies. They’ve all been traumatized. Many of the children are on their own. Relief agencies aim to provide the basics for survival. Lemon Tree Trust aims to lift them higher. When they asked refugees what they miss most about home, many said they longed for the sights and sounds of nature. Many mentioned that they missed their gardens, birds, and trees. And many asked for seeds. Remarkably, some had brought precious seeds and cuttings with them from Syria when they fled.

Lemon Tree Trust, founded in 2015, helps refugees to create fresh lovely bright gardens, growing hope out of what was once just windblown, dusty soil and crude concrete.

The 26,000 refugees at the Domiz camp, in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, were driven there by the horrors of the long cruel civil war at home in Syria. Many have been there for years, while many more continue to arrive. Thanks to Lemon Tree Trust, they now have a chance to replant, recharge, and regrow.

“Lemon Tree Trust provides such a unique service through gardening, which is why I support the organization," says McPherson. The gardens bring stability, beauty and dignity.

The gardens, along with the men, women, and children who tend them are life affirming. Despite intermittent water and electricity, despite poor soil few resources, despite all odds, rose bushes, heavy with blossoms, push up in between makeshift tents and corrugated tin shelters.

Fig, pomegranate, and lemon trees offer edible treasures. Fresh green herbs sprout from tin-can pots. There is shade, fragrance, flower, and fruit, where the once was barren sand. Bodies and souls are nourished. Beauty bring some relief to great suffering.

“Every child requires water and food to survive. But it is hope, beauty, and dignity that provide the oxygen to live,” says John Kluge, Founder & Managing Director, the Refugee Investment Network, a Lemon Tree Trust supporter.

Biodiversity expert Dr. Sami Youssef helped Lemon Tree Trust establish the first refugee gardens, almost 4 years ago. He helped to identify plant species that would thrive at the camp locations. He found several previously unrecorded plant species growing nearby on the Mesopotamian plain that surrounds the camp. It’s a biodiversity hotspot.

Youssef is, himself, a refugee. He fled Syria on foot, walking for 10 days, through the war zone, to reach this camp, with his two young children in tow.

Refugee camps, like Domiz, are filled with ordinary people, who represent all economic classes and a broad range of professions. In their homelands, many have worked as doctors, designers, architects, botanists, farmers, and teachers. A record number are children. They all yearn to restore some semblance of normalcy and grace in their lives.

Against all odds, refugees find a way to create and elevate their surroundings through their skills,"  says Dr. Christine Mahoney, author of Failure and Hope: Fighting for the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced. Mahoney, who is especially interested in innovative solutions to social problems, launched and leads Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia.

The gardens bring dignity to refugees who have been stripped of it. The gardens are wonderful outlets of creativity as well. Using what little is available -- scrap steel, bits of concrete, repurposed tin drums and cans, plastic bottles, gutter pipes, -- anything can become a vessel or an anchor or even a fountain.

Lemon Tree Trust, sponsors gardening competitions at the camps, and encourages everyone to take participate. While only 50 people entered in 2016, almost 1,000 entrants across the 5 refugee camps are competing this year.

Lemon Tree Trust sponsored a garden at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Garden Show this past spring to raise awareness and support for the plight of refugees. “We wanted to elevate the discussion around refugees, and show they are more than the pain and hardship that they have seen – they want to move on, and their gardens bring them joy,” trust CEO Stephanie Hunt said in an interview with The Guardian.

The RHS show garden was designed by award-winning landscape and garden designer Tom Massey, together with Youssef, with input from the refugee gardeners. Massey visited the Domiz camp earlier this year to get a firsthand look at the refugee gardens there and to learn about the native plants.

To his surprise, Massey found that the majority of plants in Domiz are grown for purely ornamental purposes rather for food, despite food shortages. Feeding the soul is important too.

Massey worked with many of the same limited set of raw materials as the refugees use in their gardens, using many of the same species of plants, specially grown for the project by Hortus Loci.

A 50-year-old lemon tree stood at the center of the show garden. A wall garden featured herbs and vegetables growing out of hanging tin cans and halved plastic bottles, just as they did at the camp.  

The RHS sent 2,000 packets of seeds out to Domiz last month, including vegetables such as peppers and cucumbers, and flowers such as marigolds and sunflowers. Interestingly, 100 years ago, RHS sent many of the same kinds of seeds to British citizens who were prisoners of war in the Ruhleben internment camp in Germany, to help them survive the hardships.

Lemon Tree Trust is now expanding its efforts, with new projects underway in Greece. Working alongside field partners Metadrasi in Athens and on Lesvos and Lighthouse Relief in Ritsona camp, the trust is now supporting the creation of gardens for unaccompanied children.

When a 9 year old girl, who now lives unaccompanied in Ritsona, was asked how the garden project makes her feel, she replied, “We had so many flowers in Syria. This garden makes me happy.”

“Gardening has the power to aid and accelerate the process of healing and this is as true for children as it is adults,” explains Hunt. The projects designed to interest the children in nurturing plants to aid their physical and mental wellbeing. It occupies them with something positive on a daily basis.

Lemon Tree Trust is also now extending its work to providing Crisis Response Garden Kits, ranging in size from a family garden to a large community project, providing seeds and tools so that newly arrived refugees can start growing food immediately. To date, 1,200 kits have been designed and assembled in Domiz by a workers’ co-operative made up of refugees, with funding from cosmetics company LUSH. The kits are distributed by Iraqi NGO Mercy Hands.

Latest UN Refugee Agency figures set the number of displaced people globally at 68.5 million, with as many as 50 million of them children, the highest ever in modern history. And that number is increasing at a record rate of about 44,000 every day. The need is growing exponentially.

To support Lemon Tree Trust’s extraordinarily beautiful work, please consider making a donation here. 100% of donations are used to fund projects in refugee camps.

“Sometimes, all it takes is a little investment in people to spark hope,” as John Kluge reminds us.

Read more about Children in These Trips Make Kids More Beautiful, Raising a More Beautiful World, Because… Children and 10 Best Countries for Kids 2018.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.

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1. Image: Lemon Tree Trust Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
2. Image: Domiz Refugee Camp. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
3. Image: Domiz Refugee Camp. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
4. Image: Woman sits in Domiz Refugee Camp garden. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
5. Image: Refugees tend roses at Domiz Refugee Camp Garden. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
6. Image: by Dirk-Jan Visser. A gazania grows from the dusty soil at Domiz Refugee Camp, Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
7. Image: Refugees at Domiz Refugee Camp Garden. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
8. Image: Refugee woman tends Domiz Refugee Camp Garden. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
9. Image: by Kay Montgomery. Lemon Tree Trust garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show,  designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
10. Image: Domiz Refugee Camp Garden. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
11. Image: Lemon Tree Trust Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
12. Image: Lemon Tree Trust Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
13. Image: by Dirk-Jan Visser. Tom Massey examines new shoots on trees at the Domiz Refugee Camp, in Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
14. Image: Lemon Tree Trust Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
15. Image: Lemon Tree Trust Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Tom Massey. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
16. Image: Refugee garden. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
17. Image: Students plant the Liberation Garden at Domiz Refugee Camp. Iraq. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
18. Image: Assembled Crisis Response Garden Kits in Domiz Camp, Iraq, ready for Syria. Courtesy of Lemon Tree Trust.
19. Image: by Tom Massey. Children tend Lemon Tree Trust Garden at Domiz Refugee Camp, in Iraq.