This story is from Planet Detroit’s Neighborhood Reporting Lab, where community reporters write about health and climate issues in their neighborhood. Neighborhood Reporting Lab is supported by the Americana and Kresge Foundations.
Bayan Jaber walked into the Arab American National Museum last week not to see the ‘Contributions from the Arab World’ or the ‘Coming to America’ exhibit.
Instead, she was there for the museum’s inaugural seed swap.
In the main hall, Jaber found tables lined with seed packets for growing Aleppo peppers (used as a dry spice) and bamya (okra). There was also a gardening station and a space to paint rocks and planters.
At seed swaps, individuals exchange gardening practices and seeds, firmly rooting their knowledge in their community’s hands.
Jaber is a first-generation American. Her family, which immigrated from south Lebanon in the mid-eighties, now calls Dearborn home.
“I love how the museum is telling Arab stories through agriculture and community planting practices and embraces our heritage from back home,” Jaber told Planet Detroit.
One of the event’s organizers was Afeefeh S., who contributed okra, marigold, and luffa seeds. She co-founded Metro Swaps in 2021 as a way to build community and sustainability.
“It’s all about sustainability and spending quality time with each other,” she said.
Fatima Al-Rasool, the Arab American National Museum’s public programming coordinator, proposed hosting the event to further the museum’s mission of cultural preservation and connecting communities to the Arab American experience.
The seed swap is a way for the Arab American community to pass down familiar foods and keep certain plants in circulation when their native lands might be at war.
Throughout the event, packets were in flux as eager event-goers took and traded seeds to diversify their home gardens. Invasive and GMO seeds are were forbidden. Also on the agenda was a demonstration for newbie gardeners on how to sprout a seed.
”People are bringing seeds and plants from their homeland with them and keeping them alive here. Having these plants in their gardens relates them to their homelands and their identities,” Al-Rasool said.
The seeds also help Arab Americans stay connected to their culinary traditions.
“Having those plants nearby that you can create dishes with, or even have the flowers, the scents that you are bringing from home, I think it’s preserving culture,” Al-Rasool said. “They’re heirlooms treasured by families.”
In addition to the seed swap, the public was invited to Al-Hadiqa, the museum’s rooftop garden.
The garden grows plants that are deeply rooted in Arab cuisine: za’atar, a savory herb, kusa (squash) Aleppo peppers and mulukhiyah, a green leafy vegetable that is a staple of Egyptian and Middle Eastern cooking.
Rooftop garden teaches sustainability
Built in 2023, the rooftop garden embraces gardening practices used throughout the Arab world, such as knowing how to grow non-native plants and which plants to grow together. The museum highlights those rituals as a way to maintain identity in Dearborn, home to the largest concentration of Arabs in North America.
Curators at the museum also want the garden to be a teaching tool, so they developed the Al-Hadiqa Apprenticeship in Environmental Stewardship, which will open to all high schoolers in April. Led by a naturalist, the students will participate in workshops that teach hands-on gardening skills, climate change, and sustainability.
“The museum wanted to host a program that combines storytelling with something important to the youth, which is climate activism,” Al-Rasool said.
The herbs and vegetables grown in the garden are given away at no charge to community members who attend Friday open hours at the Arab American National Museum in August and September.
Many of the plants grown at Al-Hadiqa are from Southwest Asia and North Africa. After last year’s harvest, museum workers took the surplus seeds and used them to create the inaugural Seed Swap.
“We harvested so much over the summer, and with our harvest came a lot of seeds that we were able to save,” said Al-Rasool. We thought it would be nice to do a seed swap to share in that bounty and accept seeds that might be a good fit for the rooftop garden.”
Alejandro Ugalde Sandoval contributed reporting to this story.
