Lemon Tree Trust featured in new book celebrating the power of gardens to change lives
Gardens That Can Save the World, a new book by award-winning garden designer Lottie Delamain, features Lemon Tree Trust and we are honoured to be included.
The book, published on 12 March by Thames & Hudson, brings together 65 projects from around the world, exploring how gardens and growing can address some of the most pressing challenges people face today, from climate change and food insecurity to isolation, displacement and trauma.
Lemon Tree Trust features in the EMPOWER chapter, under the heading Grow plants to connect you to home, which gathers stories of gardens growing in some of the world’s most difficult circumstances, including refugee camps and conflict zones in Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine and beyond. The chapter focuses in particular on our Garden of the Month initiative, which runs across nine refugee and internally displaced persons camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The initiative supports displaced communities to create and tend their own garden spaces, recognising that growing things, however modest the plot, can restore a sense of dignity, agency and belonging when so much else has been lost.
Lottie writes of how the Garden of the Month award brings “much needed pride, joy and wellbeing in stark and uncertain times” and reflects on what gardeners in displacement choose to grow: not only food, but flowers that carry memory, beauty and a sense of home.
Aveen Ibrahem is Operations Manager at Lemon Tree Trust, overseeing our community gardening and cooking programmes across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Her work supports activities in Azadî Community Garden in Domiz 1 camp, as well as outreach and coordination across the nine camps where Lemon Tree Trust currently operates. Having lived in Domiz 1 … Continued
Inside the polytunnels at the Hêvî Community Garden in Gawilan refugee camp, Garden Manager Othman Qewas carefully selects fruit trees and flowering plants grown from seed. Joined by Hamid Abdullah, Lemon Tree Trust’s Horticulture and Landscape Consultant, the plants are loaded into the car before setting off to visit families across the camp. As part of our ongoing children’s outreach programme in Gawilan camp, … Continued
Bringing together residents to celebrate the home gardens they have grown, tended and transformed over the past year, Lemon Tree Trust’s 2026 Annual Garden Competitions have taken place across nine refugee and IDP (internally displaced people) camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. This year’s competitions introduced a greater emphasis on welcoming new participants alongside … Continued