Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2009, page 64
Diplomatic Doings
Emigrants’ Garden in Jounieh
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RAISING awareness of the environment and providing recreational parks for all the children of Lebanon was the goal of Regina Fenianos when she founded the Green Garden Group in November 2001. On May 12, plans for her most ambitious project in Jounieh were presented to Los Angeles Lebanese Americans at a reception hosted by Lebanon’s Consul General Houssam Diab.
Overlooking the bay of Jounieh, the park will cover 5,000 square meters and will be known as the Emigrants’ Garden.
“Jounieh was the port from which most Lebanese departed to every continent,” Mrs. Fenianos explained, “and it is fitting that this will be the site to honor their accomplishments wherever they settled.”
The municipality of Jounieh has donated the land, but $500,000 must be raised to create gardens structured in the shapes of the five continents to which Lebanese emigrated and to grow plants indigenous to each.
The park will include a research center where emigrants can trace their roots, a museum containing photos and histories of emigrants, and an open air podium. A donation of $5,000 will earn placement of one’s name on the “Wall of Fame” in the garden.
The Green Garden Group has established 14 public parks and playgrounds in Lebanon, and five more are underway. For more information, visit <www.greengardengroup.lb>.
—Pat McDonnell Twair
