Grace Alexander and the Gather community

We were totally bowled over by a generous donation from the Grace Alexander Gather community back in December of last year.

Grace is a registered and certified APHA seed-merchant and grows flowers for sale (either as flowers or for seed). In 2020, Grace launched her passion project, ‘Gather with Grace Alexander’, a monthly membership space for people wanting to ‘step away from the noise and escape to a world of flowers’.

And it is Grace, together with the members of the Gather community, that will fund a second community garden in Bardarash camp. The garden is in initial planning stage and subject to the necessary approvals from camp management, but we hope work can start later this year.

The community space will differ to the more formal garden of that at the SEED trauma centre in Bardarash camp. As a public garden, available for all 14,000 residents to access, it will have a children’s play area in addition to raised beds for growing a wide variety of flowers, vegetables, herbs and fruits. The community space will welcome people to ‘gather’ and ‘step away from the noise’ of life in camp, which is a lovely fit we think.

Watch this space!…

Find out more

Learn about other community gardens we have built in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the USA.

Support gardening activities in refugee and IDP camps 

The Lemon Tree Trust welcomes one-off and regular donations. 

To make a donation, please go to: lemontreetrust.org/donate. 

Our core infrastructure costs are fully funded so 100% of your donation directly supports gardening projects and initiatives in refugee communities. 

• £1 / $1 gives a family a packet of vegetable seeds 
• £5 / $5 provides a family with a basket of nutritious produce harvested from a Lemon Tree Trust community garden
• £10 / $10 funds a Home Garden Starter Kit for a new family arriving in the camp, containing a Home Garden Manual, seeds, tools, a grow-bag and a children’s gardening activity
• £20 / $ 20 gives a family a lemon tree providing shade and fruit
• £100 / $100 provides 4 schools with a Children’s Garden Starter Kit for classrooms
• £1,000 / $1,000 purchases a new polytunnel for one of our community gardens
• £10,000 / $10,000 supports the creation of a new community garden
• £50,000 / $50,000 supports gardening projects in new communities in Greece and Jordan, including projects for unaccompanied children
• £100,000 / $100,000 enables the Lemon Tree Trust to build a new community garden hub in a camp, supporting the breadth of our work to restore dignity, improve environments and empower women

Photo: Azadi Community Garden in Domiz 1 camp, Kurdistan Region of Iraq © Britt Willoughby Dyer