Azadi Community Garden extension

Lemon Tree Trust has taken up an exciting opportunity to expand the Azadi Community Garden to cover an additional 864 square metres.  

Since 2016, Azadi, our flagship garden in Domiz 1 camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, has been a busy hub of gardening activity, welcoming more than 50 women and their children every day. As well as tending to vegetables and herbs, Azadi is a place to learn new skills and a safe space to meet and socialise. 

The significant extension of Azadi will allow us to double the number of raised beds from 50 to 100, ensuring that many more vulnerable families living in Domiz 1 have access to fresh food. As well as boosting food security, the increase in gardening provision will help to improve people’s physical and mental health.

3D visualisation designs of how the new garden extension will look – by Lemon Tree Trust’s Horticulture & Landscape Consultant, Hamid Abdullah. 

Aveen Ibrahem, our operations manager in the KRI and Domiz 1 resident said: 

“We’re incredibly excited about expanding the Azadi Community Garden to support many more people to grow their own produce. Azadi is already thriving with so much gardening activity and friendship – and it’s great that we will soon be able to welcome additional families, who when they visit us, will also be able to take advantage of our other facilities, such as our bread oven, pancake hot plate and small library. We are building a real community here.”

The raised beds will be made from concrete blocks and filled with planting medium (a mixture of soil and compost). A variety of vegetable and herb seeds will be on offer to our new gardeners so they can choose their family’s favourites to grow, harvest and cook with at home.

As part of our extension plan, we also intend to set up a marketplace later this year to offer a safe space for our growers to sell produce and for us to sell our herbal tea and plants – with proceeds raised ploughed straight back into Azadi and our community garden activities.

Our gardening team in the KRI have lost no time in removing the badly damaged polytunnels and preparing the ground for our new raised beds and market area. The team now has A LOT of new fencing to install 😎

Thank you for your ongoing support / How you can help further  

This extension is only possible due to donations from our kind supporters. Thank you so much for your generous donations to date which will cover the cost of the garden extension build.  

We do, however, welcome donations for more projects like this and to help with the maintenance of the garden and the purchase of seeds and gardening equipment for our 50 new gardeners. Please make a donation if you can. 

About Domiz 1 camp 

Domiz 1 is a refugee camp located near the city of the Duhok in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Established in 2012 as a temporary camp to provide shelter to those fleeing the war in Syria, the ‘accidental city’ is now home to more than 32,000 individuals and is expected to remain home for thousands for the long-term. Learn more about daily life in Domiz 1 camp.