The True Story of Laziza Park
By Grace Landsberg
Photo from JustGiving.
Once home to the Middle East’s oldest brewery, the site now known as Laziza Garden quickly became a de facto garbage dump after the brewery’s highly-contested demolition in 2017. The site was one of the last factories in Beirut, a rare glimpse of industrial history. The original plan of the demolition was to create space for a luxury apartment complex that was certain to remain empty like the many others of its kind. However, the construction never started. Much of the rubble from the demolition remained and neighbors continued to throw garbage on the site.
However, the former brewery’s site has made quite the comeback in recent years and is now home to Laziza Park; a unique, community-built, and shared space in Beirut. Once an eyesore, the area has transformed completely from piles of rubbish to a completely green area filled with trees, flowers, plants, and even fruits and vegetable gardens. Even more unique than the community-centered space itself is its origin story and transformation from a garbage dump to a public garden.
In March of 2020, less than 6 months before the explosion of the Beirut Port on August 4, 2020, a group of friends in the Geitawi neighborhood started to clean up the area. They organized a WhatsApp group and called themselves “Guerrilla Gardeners,” and eventually named their group “GRO Beirut.”
The below interview with three of the first GRO volunteers, Samer Haj Ali, Abbas T Abbas, and Charlie Mersen tells the story of how this beloved garden came to be.
Can you tell me a bit about the history of Laziza Park?
Abbas
There was an idea that was shared by some friends on a rooftop about finding empty places we could renovate to create public parks, green spaces, or even a skate park. The group liked the idea and then we went on a tour to check out possible locations. We went to several different places and eventually found Laziza. We liked the space from the beginning and started going every day. It was all during the first lockdown in March 2020. We started with the trash, basically, from March through June all we did was clean the space. Our other jobs and volunteer positions had all stopped at this point due to COVID. We decided on Laziza as our location without knowing anything else about the place, who owned it, or what it was before. All we did was buy gloves and garbage bags and kept working; hauling the garbage out bag by bag. I can’t even tell you how many bags we pulled out, people had been throwing their trash there for years: weeds and plants had wrapped themselves around it (the garbage).
Once the space was more clear, we bought two trees. We bought a lemon tree and someone donated an orange tree. Then we bought some herbs and decided to go plant them in the park as well. And that was the start of the garden.
Charlie
The majority of the project’s start was just cleaning the area. It was funny to have the neighbors watch us throw away their garbage every day. People gradually joined us in the project, locals and foreigners alike. There were a couple of revolutionary moments in the project. One of them was when a volunteer from Belgium suggested we bring the rubbish bins to the garden instead of walking so far away to throw the garbage away each time.
Samer
We were a group of young people who initially just wanted to clean the space and do something to change our surroundings for the better. The cleaning process included more than 20 regular volunteers, who used very simple tools. We cultivated beautiful experiences all without a manager. We all had a sense of responsibility towards the space, and harmony with each other;and among us, there were nearly 20 different nationalities. We used to bring water for watering at first from a car wash using plastic gallons. As for the dirt and rubbish, we would bring the garbage to a dumpster site about 500 meters from the garden. Of course, after the explosion, our community efforts expanded. We began distributing food and medicine boxes to the needy, cleaning the railway tracks, rebuilding the doors and windows of the damaged houses, and building places for people to sit and relax. Again, we had no purpose in our work other than humanity. One of our early goals was to make the neighbors who have lived for many years in the same neighborhood finally get acquainted, communicate, sit down, and hang out with one another.
What are you most proud of in regards to Laziza?
Charlie
I am most proud of all the different people who volunteered with us. In that stage of 2020, the Lebanese were giving up on Lebanon. They tried revolution for 6 months, and the economy was going down. All the Lebanese working for us felt like they were working for a country that was dying. So I am really proud of the Lebanese people that stayed with us and didn’t give up their country. We had so many people come up to us and tell us “this will never work,” and honestly the area looked hopeless for so long.
I am also proud of all the Syrians who helped us. Lebanon has given them very little and treated them very poorly, so to turn around and create a park for free, for the benefit of the Lebanese community was astonishing. And lastly, the foreign volunteers: they went in and out on their visits to Lebanon and they worked on something that they wouldn’t even get to benefit from in the long term. I am proud of the determination and the challenges each group individually faced and overcame. We all kept the belief that it wouldn’t fail.
There was also a period between the explosion in August 2020 to January 2021 that Abbas really kept Laziza alive, he dragged so much soil there alone. And I am especially proud of him for his efforts during this period.
Samer
To create a green space in an urban space is enough to feel proud of– but we wanted the neighbors to sit together and talk together. We encouraged people to get to know each other who didn’t have a close relationship before this garden. We learned and we taught the neighbors that if you want to change something, you can. You just have to start. There is no excuse if you want to change.
Abbas
I am proud of Laziza itself. It’s nothing specific. It’s everything combined together. I am proud it exists and that it will continue to exist.
I’m proud of the determination and dedication of everyone that helped, too. At some points, people thought it would never be a safe place for humans to enter; to some, it seemed like maybe a wasteland with maybe some trees in it. But we were just a couple of people who believed in this place, and we watched it come back to life again. Watching Laziza grow helped me get through after the explosion. The neighbors, too, finally had just one safe space they could depend on after the explosion, and I know it meant a lot to them.
What were some of the obstacles in creating the green space?
Samer
If you want to change anything, you have to ask the neighbors. For example, one of the neighbors broke the box of compost, and another one called the police to stop building projects and processes. Another one called the police when there was a dance workshop in the park. We always have to deal with the neighbors in a polite and respectful way because they are “the sons and daughters of the neighborhood.”
It was hard for them at first to accept and understand that we were just volunteering there, working on this space, not for money, but because we wanted to change things. We wanted to change this way of thinking for them, and we became friends with them after a period of time when they finally understood that ‘these people did change our lives’. As of recently they still don’t like when strangers come to this place. So it's still an obstacle the space faces. The neighbors still think we are workers and that we get money from this work from an NGO or something like that, but that is not true at all.
Abbas
Sometimes lack of money, food, or volunteers (are obstacles). Sometimes we had too many people and not enough work for them. We needed to be more organized at times as a core group. The thing (about Laziza) is that there was never one person, and no one was ever paid.
The most difficult part for me personally was sometimes communicating with the neighbors, especially when I felt like I was being watched or being accused. I was doing something I felt was right and beneficial, but maybe they did not agree. They called the police on me many times.
Charlie's not being able to return to Lebanon was also a huge obstacle. He is a big source of energy for me. I couldn’t understand why this happened, why someone who did so many good things for this country was unable to return. We had a lot of plans for Laziza that fell apart after this happened.
Charlie
Lack of tools, lack of money, lack of volunteers, lack of neighborhood support, lack of legal grounding, and high prices for materials. Also, Abbas kept breaking all of the pick axes.
We lacked knowledge, planning, and communication on our part too. It wasn’t a very smoothly run or well-planned operation. We didn’t plan which tree would go where. Once we decided the space would be a garden we just kept showing up and working each day to create it.
Can you tell me about your favorite memory in Laziza?
Abbas
My favorite memory is when Charlie was leaving we had a massive barbeque, and all the people we knew in Lebanon came, and people we didn’t know came too. It was one of the best meals. People were all enjoying the space, listening to music, eating, and having fun.
Samer
My favorite memory was making a birthday party for a Syrian girl in the neighborhood. We made all the kids so happy at this party. We have done other birthdays there too for the children in the neighborhood and these are some of my favorite memories too.
Charlie
There was a time when we pulled all of the weeds out of the ground and had them in huge piles. We didn’t know how we would get rid of them. At 5:00 in the morning one day we went down to the park and just burned all of the weeds. We lit three massive fires in the middle of Beirut so early in the morning, just so no one would notice. It took about 2.5 hours for everything to burn to the ground. There were big scorch marks on the ground. A normal NGO wouldn’t have done it. Even a policeman came and asked us what we were doing. It was a bit mental.
The next one is the first delivery of soil. We knew that if we hoped for anything to truly be able to grow there, we would literally need to replace the ground. We were planting big trees, the ones in the garden that day. We ordered a truck with 2 or 3 tons of soil in it, but this was before the park was accessible by car (before the explosion). So the truck arrived and it couldn't get to the park. The truck dumped 3 tons of soil on the road (next to Kalei Cafe) and we only had about 3 spades. It took us about 6 hours to just shovel the dirt over the wall. Lots of people joined us when they saw that, and it was just sort of hilarious.
Some Laziza Park progress photos
If you could give yourself or the group advice when work started in the garden, what would you say?
Samer
What I learned from this park, and what I would advise myself in the future, is that if I see a place like this one, not clean, empty of buildings but full of garbage–I am not going to wait for anyone to start. It’s most important just to start, and then encourage other people to join you.
Abbas
Don’t despair, no matter how hard it looks, just start. We were truly fed up with people or NGOs just having meetings and talking without doing anything with their initiatives, and we decided we didn’t want to be like that. And I think we did a good job of staying true to that.
Charlie
The process wasn’t perfect but I don’t think there is anything I would change about it. We decided we wanted to work on the space and we didn’t hesitate, despite the obstacles or how difficult it was. The beauty of the project is that it’s not directed by one person or one group, everyone who has helped to shape Laziza is a part of it as a greater collective effort.
Sources and additional articles/reports about Laziza Park: