BEIRUT: Outdoor space is an all-too-rare commodity in Beirut, but at the 8th annual Garden Show and Spring Festival, opening Tuesday, all things green are receiving a platform to shine, right in the heart of the capital.
Expected to attract in excess of 24,000 visitors, who flocked to the four-day event last year, the 2011 festival, is predicted to be the biggest on record, with a range of ministers and foreign ambassadors all attending the opening.
Taking place at Beirut Hippodrome and marketing itself as, “the gateway to summer,” set to “turn your world into a bright and more colorful place,” the festival has already drawn in more than 200 exhibitors, keen to display everything from high-end garden furniture to organic plants and even homemade jams and soaps.
Open daily from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., it also promises long evenings, filled with entertainment and local food and wine for adults, with younger visitors also kept busy by troops of jugglers, acrobats and puppeteers, performing intermittently in the specially designated children’s area, kitted out with trampolines and bungee castles.
“The most important thing in this meeting with you is your smiles and the joy despite the strong sun,” said caretaker Social Affairs Minister Salim Sayegh, speaking at the inauguration of “2011 – the year of forests,” an art exhibition by hearing impaired children.
“I hope your entire lives will be sunny,” he told the children from the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf, whose art work will hang side-by-side with the other displays for the entirety of the four-day festival.
“We are here to raise awareness about the Jabal Moussa nature reserve,” said Rana al-Hajj, biosphere reserve manager at the Association for the Protection of Jabal Moussa, who is manning a festival stall.
“It is a great audience and a good opportunity to let people know that we are here and show them we are doing.”
By selling saplings, fresh from one of the three Jabal Moussa nurseries, the association hopes to spark interest in conservation techniques, as well as draw in more visitors to its reserve, home to some 630 different species of flora, 112 of which can be used for medical purposes and 25 which are endemic to Lebanon.
“We’re buying plants for our terrace,” said Zeina Awad a mother of three who brought her children to the festival. “There is so little space in the city, but the children love to play around planting and looking after flowers, so every spring we buy something new and add to our collection.”
With pollution becoming an increasing concern in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, and global warming taking an ever-larger toll on the environment, eco-friendly solutions, which promise to reduce our carbon footprint, featured prominently in this year’s exhibition.
“We’re trying to hold drivers accountable for their emissions and want them to take responsibility,” said Rita al-Hajj, head of the Carbon Neutral Car Project at Lebanese NGO Terre Liban, which is also displaying its range of recycled goods at the fair.
“They can compensate by adopting a number of trees in Lebanon’s forests, sufficient to absorb car emissions.”
For LL3,000 the organization promises to preserve a tree in Baabda forest for one year, absorbing some 100g of carbon dioxide each day. The task, however, is not easy, and around 80 trees are needed offset the emissions for someone driving a medium sized car for 30 kilometers a day.
“Baabda is the last forest near Beirut that is left standing,” said Hajj. “All the other ones are gone and we have to work very hard to preserve what little remains.”