Rejuvenation: Nurturing Jerusalem’s Botanical Gardens

[Music] although everyone this is Yves Harrow host of rejuvenation on the land official Network today is August 19th 2018 another beautiful summer day inland visual the ninth day of Elul 5778 working our way towards the end of the summer and you can feel it here I had an insanely incredibly exciting week last week is that enough hyperbole that I am NOT gonna talk to you about today it's gonna have to wait for another week I prefer not to do two monologues in a row and last week you heard some of my trip to to the Balkans so I've got a great interview that I taped a couple of days ago with Leo goddess Minh and dr. or fragments appear of Jerusalem's Botanical Garden and so that's gonna be the bulk of today's show but I did just want to say hello and tell you what you're missing what you were going to have to wait for for another week I went up to the Temple Mount I went skydiving it was really really crazy to be conditioned to the other usual things that happened but those are the two things that will stand out like in my life not just for last week yes I went skydiving I jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet I'm still literally flying high from it I'll still be flying high in a week and I'll share more about the context of that in just a few days but at meantime I want you to enjoy today's show and I hope you all have a really great week if you're in Israel you're seeing what I'm seeing you're seeing the height of the butt sphere of the grape harvest all around the land now depending on the altitude and the vintners and the winemakers they are harvesting the grapes for this year's wine and that's why this Wednesday I have a full bus for one is will fund my annual wine trip going to the area of the shrim run going into the fields into the into the vineyards with dr. Chevy jewelry who's doing that great research on the ancient wines and then going to toro winery and to the be me amine like there's a special being I mean wine makers Club they just make a few bottles of wine a year just a few hundred and we're gonna be tasting their wine and out winery and just like a really great day I'm hoping it should be a really great day and just get into the land itself and get into the season of the wine like we used to in the olden days and like we so much enjoy today so I'm looking forward to that this week and and I'll fill you in on that and on so many other things meantime going cutting away to the Botanical Gardens once again thanking Ben and Tabitha everybody associated with the station hope you guys are our good love hearing from you love the feedback I got from last week's show suggestions of books to read and all that also people been writing to me asking about my schedule for my upcoming trip in October and in November you can go to my website leave Harrow comm and see not everything but pretty much 90% of the schedule is set and if you are where I'm going to be let's plan on meeting up that would be just totally great so write to me Eve at the land of visual comm I hope everything is good with all of you we're just rolling it day-by-day and just never a dull moment so take care of you buddy leave Harrow rejuvenation the Land of Israel Network thank you guys so much boys for tuning in and for listening enjoy the interview [Music] hi everybody Eve Harrow on rejuvenation for the land of israel network it is the end of a beautiful August day here in Jerusalem and I'm sitting in the Botanical Gardens in the heart of the city with Lior goddess Minh and dr. ory fragments appear whom I was really very honored to meet a few weeks ago when I was here on a review course for tour guides there's a lot of us and this is right in the heart of Jerusalem don't know the place and I was actually just here yesterday with my grandchildren because they have a whole Playmobil exhibit which was wonderful and fun but I asked them to carve out some time from their very very busy workdays she talked to you guys about what did the Botanical Gardens are but more than that what it is that they do in their professional life so maybe we'll start with early hi there it's very difficult to say shortly what we are doing because we are doing so much so much um but we grow a lot of plants over 6,000 species and varieties of plants from all over the world all of them are growing here in Jerusalem and many of them are very interesting plants they could be fruit trees that are just ripening now in August they could be medicinal plants they could be just beautiful flowers a water saving plans for for the new sustainable garden or other plants so it's kind of I would say a Disneyland for plants so what is your exact position here okay so that my scientific specialty is sustainable gardening and bulb research so I'm doing research on wild garlic's and we are doing all kinds of ecological research and research on endangered plants but my job my everyday job is the managerial one we we manage the collection of the of the garden and just imagine it's like managing a supermarket a warehouse with a lot of items you have to go you have to order new staff you have to get rid of old staff and you have to manage the whole thing and that's a whole that's a lot of work with the staff that is doing that by the way everything we are doing we are not doing only by ourselves we are doing with volunteers were volunteering the garden so if you know anybody in central Israel that isn't interested in volunteering the only I think the only exception is that you have to do at least four hours a week that's it so if somebody is interesting and volunteering in the garden is not only in you know gardening or weeding it could be in the library it could be in creation it could be in labeling it could be in the nursery in the offices or a lot of jobs are offered and a lot of people enjoy it because it becomes something social beyond the botany and I know for myself because I have a garden at home I find it therapeutic to get in there and get dirt under my fingernails and just watch something grow there's nothing like it so I'm originally from California where there's a garlic festival every summer so like is there anything new in garlic it has that hasn't already been figured out oh there's a lot there's a lot new in garlic's and in all the native flora of Israel so we are doing research the floor of Israel it's all being documented in a big website with which we manage that is called floor of Israel online so you can google that and but specifically on garlic there are almost 50 different wild garlic species in Israel most of them are not edible some of them are but many of them are ornamental so they are beautiful for gardens and we have described at least I think five species in the last six years that were not known within Israel so what we found again and again is that the floor of Israel references is not updated and today with molecular research we find a lot of new findings so things that we thought for example where one group of plant we thought it's one was one species we found out that this is actually three species so there is one we are very patriotic about it one one garlic we named Allium Israel it acum so the Latin name contains then the name of Israel which is unusual because Israel is only 70 years old and most of the species were described 150 years ago so Israel was not even in in mind so we have now a few of them so I mean Israel in addition to being part of a very chaotic Middle East is also on the bird migration Highway and really at the confluence of a lot of Africa Europe and Asia so does that mean that you have certain things that grow here that don't grow anywhere else so it's the most northern point for certain plant in the most southern point for another plant so they're growing together and in and they don't do that anywhere else because of our interesting geographic location on the globe it's yes for everything it's very complex so in general if we if you look at Israel Israelis half desert and half Mediterranean climate wise so it's Ihram northern elements European element or Mediterranean elements that are disappearing in the desert or vice versa but since Israel is is a junction climatic and continental Junction as you've said it's there is a lot of things that come in here and mix and change here so everything is peripheral so all day I don't know Mediterranean means are very different here at the edge of the rain from the center of the rain so the some of them speciated into into local exclusive plants so we have I think 56 plants that are endemic to Israel which means they grow nowhere else in the world but what is everything but what is very interesting that everything is peripheral so all the populations even of widespread plants are very unique at the edge of their of the region I'll give you an example for example a northern species will finish here in Israel so if you want to cultivate it for California I'm sure you're very interested in that you have to take the arid most populations the arid most population are in Israel and not in Europe so just an example this climate they're not where they originally from so you mentioned sustainable agriculture so what does that mean because that's a term that many of us here all the time but what does it really mean I'll start with the water number two in the budget of the Botanical Garden is water after salaries so this is this has become a major issue in Israel because we don't have enough water and this island this island is water that is now very popular in Israel is very expensive so it's a big issue financial issue but also a collage achill issue in Israel and we are trying to replace plants that need a lot of irrigation with plants that need less irrigation it doesn't mean that we stopped irrigating the whole thing but it means that at least we are trying to save water so from this angle and we are doing a lot of work so you can look at the garden as a experimental land where we introduce a lot of plants and we check how how well they can survive without irrigation always little irrigation in the summer you know the big challenge is the big it is the long dry summer not not a cool wet winter so we are trying to test a lot of plants and we've we've already introduced some dozens of plants today to the business you know no mental business in Israel and also to the forestry a business plants that do not or do not almost do not need any any irrigation but beyond that when you talk about sustainable gardening we talked about two things what are saving and but also a were working they work saving so we're not it's work intensive sorry for my bad english labor-intensive exactly so we are we are trying to get plants that will not need a lot of work so for example we are very keen on ground cover plants that will cover an area with a dense green carpet that we look good throughout the year and then we save a lot of work on weeding so this is one another another example of sustainable gardening and in general one of the main rules in this in this context is to use a lot of local flora and this is where we specialize and we are trying to get local plants instead of exotic plants ok so moving on till your Hoos will come back to me in a few minutes the hub co-founder and director so what's the hub Wow I think most people know about hubs as co-working spaces or as the things that are happening in the technological startup world and actually what we did was look at that concept and adopted it to the environmental world and actually set up an environmental hub or we're called habitus that jbg hub for urban sustainability because what does that mean now we've gone from sustainable right from agricultural sustainability so what's urban sustainability well I think worldwide Botanical Gardens are trying to rethink their social role and to think about their positions in cities over half of the world's population lives today in cities and in Israel 92 percent of the population lives in cities and we're always used to thinking about nature and environment is something very romantic in the north of Israel when actually um we need to start thinking about what the environment looks like in the cities now sustainability is a pretty wide term that's being used in various things but I would say the first or broadest thing I can say about sustainability is taking care of today's generation without ruining it for the next generations and that could be done in a lot of things now when we talk about urban sustainability we're talking about food security we're talking about transportation we're talking about waste energy all the different things that allow a city to be resilient and that allow well-being for for the citizens now the Botanical Gardens are a 30-acre beautiful green lung with so much expertise and so much space that can offer many things to the city and I think that moving forward to the 21st century the gardens are definitely understanding that yes the scientific and botanical and sustainable gardening things are the core but we can depth and and do more things and do more reach out to the community I would say the hub we're a department at the gardens we're sort of an outreach department there I mean when I come to the gardens to set up the hub four and a half years ago I said with Olli and he told me listen we do two main things we do science and botany but the other thing that we have to do if we don't do it the first thing is not going to be worth it is educating and reaching out to people and the gardens have a beautiful big education department which brings kids from all over Jerusalem Arabs ladies secular but what we tried to do it the hub is actually reach out and and go out so we do I would say three main things one is programming we have programs for kindergartens schools young adults and pensioners all of whom received training knowledge workshops and then they go out and they either volunteer in cities or in kindergartens we set up sustainable gardens we already we've already set up over 120 sustainable gardens all over Jerusalem and we basically try and get people closer to nature get kids to know that their carrot comes from the soil and not from the supermarket and we do that so that's that's our programming now our biggest thing the hub does today is that we actually facilitate a network of 84 environmental change agents in Jerusalem and people are usually shocked to hear that there are an 84 organizations startups businesses interpreters who are doing various things and the garden which up until a couple of years ago wasn't as connected as it could have been to what they were doing today is actually a home for them and we're fob exactly so I got there eventually to the answer to your question yeah hub so we give them professional development meetups events half of what we do is just matchmaking they ask us can you please connect me to this person who's doing that we connect them to professionals from the gardens for instance the urban food forest grew from Jerusalem we connected them with Olli which gave them the scientific knowledge that they needed for for what they needed but not only that the third thing we do is actually work with the municipality to try and change some of the laws in Jerusalem or some of the limits for instance at the hub we're out we run an urban agriculture incubator where we take people want to grow food in the city and we help them do that you're talking about like a window box and their apartment or something even more extensive than that so I'm talking about Roof Gardens to grow food I don't know if you know this about 30 percent of Jerusalem population suffers from food insecurity and that's a crazy number that's like I mean if you compare it to Tel Aviv where they have 4 4 % here the numbers are really high so we're helping people grow their own food but we understood that we can help these farmers create a business plan find a roof trained them how to grow their food but if the municipality is not going to change the pricing of water or the permits to do that it's not going to work so that's just one example but we do try and do things bottom-up and try to influence the top-down how's that going for you well it's challenging I mean I'm sure most people who Hathi we're used to thinking about it as one thing but it's actually an octopus with so many different hands so sometimes we're surprised and people are very interested in this and when you I mean I think the environmental world or a sustainability world has a bad stigma how do you say stigma stigma stigmas English yeah of being tree-hugging hippies and I love tree-huggin Keefe is the I have nothing to do with them but when you I mean but that doesn't by the people from the municipality but when you start talking to them about the quality of air that the that Jerusalemites are breathing or at their food security or how easy it is to get from one place to another through transportation then they understand that it's a must-have and not just a nice-to-have thing and sometimes people are like well what does that have to do with botanical gardens and that's a that exactly what we're saying Botanical Gardens in the 21st century are not only but any focus but it's I mean it's so much more this place can actually anchor Institute can actually influence Jerusalem can actually influence lives of hundreds of people and we're trying humbly to do that are you fill in within university should the Botanical Garden stands on its own the Botanical Garden was established by the Hebrew University in the 50s but it developed into something very big and expensive in the university realized at some point this is too expensive and too complex and the university found partners and so today we are we are an NGO with a lot of with six founding organizations so we have a board with representatives from these organization and this is what we are today so we are affiliated University in many ways we sit on University land there is botanical and ecological research project being done in the in the university I for example teach in the university although I'm not employed there so there are big connections but we are not part of the university as an institute if you make some big discovery here the University have first dibs not matter doesn't work like that no it doesn't work like that in the university there is a unit called the national herbarium of Israel the herbarium is a collection of dried plants that were collected over a hundred years in the Land of Israel in its environment and so if for example I find a new wild garlic and described it is a new species I I deposited a herbarium sheets in the university obviously so that they keep it for generations particularly interested in the medicinal side of it my husband is a physician and just I think anybody who has a little bit of knowledge knows that we're reaching the limits of antibiotics and a lot of the superbugs that have come out there that we're overusing and we're heading perhaps and now we're having some kind of outbreak in Israel of some strange kind of thing in the north some bacteria that's being found from the I think from the urine of animals it's being found in some of our streams and our rivers and causing people to get sick and they're working on that so is are you doing that kind of research specifically for or it's not on that kind of a level it's not my is my personal speciality but here in the garden we have a lot of activities so we have courses on on medicinal plants for example so doctor Mina Ferran who is a big you know know how I mean a big specialist on this field is doing her courses here and there is an annual meeting of the medicinal plant organization I think that's how they're called they come here you know like two three hundred people and have their workshop and after their meeting over here so we are all the time dealing with this kind of things and this this topic is always on on our agenda because we talk about you know preserving the the biodiversity and it's a very you know a kind of sexy world biodiversity and everybody talking but why should we watch what why should we save biodiversity especially when we talk about endangered plants for example so I show my wife a plant that is the size of my finger and it has this little tiny green flowers and she said are you kidding are you wasting the money you don't have on on saving this plant this is ridiculous and I told her you know what do you know which plant which will be the next plant that will provide the new medicine for cancer or which new plant have any other any other beneficial role or do you know what's the role of this plant in its ecological ecosystem maybe it's an important role and if we lose it the whole ecosystem or part of it will collapse so this is why we are dealing a lot with conservation in general with with focus on medicinal plants or other things that are important for the human race yeah endangered as well yeah yeah I mean the endangered plant project is being done here since the 90s late 90s so with we are we are now we in our collection we have 295 endangered plant of Israel which is 70% of all the endangered plants of Israel so on one side we are a museum we show this plant we educate and you know in the garden there are dozens of thousands of people coming every year even more than that half of them are children so we educate and we show these plants what we are doing we are doing also a conservation process we are propagating this plant we are producing a lot of seeds a lot of new plants and we need partners and we need actually clients that will take these plants from us and help us you know finish the the conservation process so in this there are many many units that can do that for example the Israel gene bank that sits in volcanic center near Harvard they are we are working in collaboration so we get from them seeds we collect we grow plants and give them back seeds and so on another good example is the Gazelle Valley which is neighbouring the garden that is this is a I would say a semi natural situation in Jerusalem so a lot of plants disappeared completely from Jerusalem they might be common outside Jerusalem but inside Jerusalem they used to be common and now they are gone so we are replanting we're establishing these plants in semi natural situations and in this sense by connecting to what Elio was talking about she was talking about city nature or city conservation or whatever I think most of Israel is disturbed I mean Israel is that's for sure not the people I mean the land is disturbed so it's it's a kind of a Hong Kong there it's more piece of land with too many people but inside the cities and settlements and villages we have a lot of disturbed land and we can we can really make it again and we can really make it flower again and that's what we're trying to do within the boundaries of Jerusalem and the hub is doing a lot of work and we're doing a lot of work we're working a lot within the with the nature and park authority and with nature reserves and so we are doing a lot of conservation which is very very important do you have connections on the international scene as well or it's really just drew specifically Jerusalem and Israel based conservation wise we have we have connections of that with dozens of gardens and organization all over the world and botanically we we have connections with over 600 gardens all over the world which is wow it's a big issue and so we we have a lot of knowledge that comes from from long distances I remember Leah are you telling us we had a very interesting journey to get here maybe tell my listeners a little bit about how you ended up here in the Botanical Gardens in Jerusalem I was born in Israel but in the north and in an agricultural village in folk lane when I when I was in the fourth and fifth grade we actually moved to California my parents are medical doctors so they did their internship over there then I came back I actually spend two years in England that's where I did my masters in environmental economics which was very interesting and eyes opening and you're gonna have to tell us what that is environmental economics well I would say it's an ethical economics both for people and for the environment which is not exploitive that's funny and it's a place where the economics is serving the humans and not human serving economics like we see so much today ok so like can you give us an example like how does that fit into your work in the hub well it fits in many places I can give one example for environmental economics is how we measure things so if you're a regular economics what do you do is you measure the financial situation of Israel if it's good or bad with the GDP tamaki in Israel but that just says that anything that comes into the economy and puts in money just makes it better so for instance if people are getting divorced and they're paying their lawyer and that gets GDP up I never thought of it that way that the GDP goes up because people are getting divorced and paying their lawyer okay exactly if they're the divorce rate helps the GDP what a terrible thing okay yeah also if there are accidents and people go to the hospitals and there are ambulances that gets the GDP up so it doesn't necessarily mean that the ways we measure economics really reflects on our happiness happiness or our health so one thing that environmental economics race to do is actually have alternatives way to measure to measure things environmental economics has a lot to do with using the resources we have so if we're talking about shared economy local economy that's a lot of what we do at the hub we're actually trying to depend and rely on what our community has to offer one another and not only search for things outside and then you see that it's abundant you know the amount of things that people can offer to one another that doesn't just go down to the shake it well I mean that's the way they used to do in the olden days right when people bartered you grew this he grew that and then everybody figured it out in some ways maybe some degree I think we should be going back to that a little more and it builds community yeah I think a lot of the ideas behind sustainability or environmental economics goes back but I do think that it goes back and forward at the same time because we're not asking people to go and live in caves or I mean a lot of my friends are like Oh while you environmentalists you're all vegan and you're all telling us just to shop local and not buy plastic and I like tricity you start rubbing two sticks together Sally and I think that's one of the reasons that this field it doesn't have the best PR in the world but there are ways to go back and go forward at the same time if we use technology in a smart way if we connect to our communities which which can actually suit where we're at today in 2018 and Jerusalem has to be such a challenging environment to do all this because we speak of community but in Jerusalem there's probably hundreds if not thousands of different communities some of whom really don't have very much to do with each other at all well I think that just like we're talking about biodiversity with plants it's important that we talk about biodiversity with humans I used to live in Tel Aviv and I loved Tel Aviv but it all felt just a little bit too much of the same and in Jerusalem I feel that the diversity if you if we look at it as the solution and not as the problem that can really lead us to the most beautiful inspiring and innovative ideas were we're all these different populations needs do you have programs like that like do you just have let's say Arab kids coming in with their teacher or different schools the secular school the karate the ultra-orthodox school system's coming in on their own and that's a great beginning just to expose them to a world that they probably are not familiar with or is there some kind of integration that goes on here in the Botanical Gardens as well so first of all as far as the Education Department goes there are kids coming from all over and they instead of doing or talking about coexistence they just coexist you know they just come here together same with the hub network what we do our programming or our network and our network there people can sit I mean one of them could be Arab from East Jerusalem another one can be an ultra-orthodox and they just discussed sustainability or they discuss now I mean what they want to do with the waste in Jerusalem and then it just you know it just happens and each person has such a different worldview that it just enriches the conversation there's a lot of commonalities to a lot of the same problems in different sectors on top of that we have an agriculture farm in the in the garden which is a proper school with a with a headmaster and a teachers and they have kids from all over Jerusalem you know Arab kids Jewish kids secular ki its religious kids all over and a mentally disabled kids so all kinds of kids are coming to the God and I think about 1,500 kids per week so that's a lot of kids that come from all over and they just imagine a poor neighborhood in Jerusalem where they have mostly concrete or sometimes rubbish and this kid comes the garden and suddenly are exposed to greens and as leo says carrots can grow in the ground and not only being offered yes in plastic bag so they grow all kind of things in the garden and they grow vegetables they grow flowers and the end of their semester they can bring host home something it could be you know a white cheese with a little bit of leak inside that they grew or it could be a little pot with a small flower for the mom so that's I think very important and look one of the more successful campaigns I think they ran here in Israel a few decades ago is not to pick the wild flowers all right with all the very lively behavior of Israeli children to say the least that was actually something I think that was fairly successful and you can go out to these places in the spring etc and there's carpets of flowers and they're not being picked so education can work and if it starts with the kids and then they bring it home and they're able to say like you know we want to do this here in our neighborhood as well what would you say is your biggest challenge right now aside from financial challenges which are always how to keep these programs going I would imagine but aside from that and people can get involved of course if they want to you can be in touch with me I'll get you in touch with these guys what would you say your biggest challenge is decide from the water and which already already spoke about and the finances well I would say from the hub perspective we're trying to influence Jerusalem we're trying with our community of change agents with the backing of the Botanical Gardens to influence Jerusalem and our biggest challenge is to convince people why this topic has to do it every little piece over their lives and yeah telling them why environment and sustainability are as important as the political situation yeah I would say that's a challenge but we need to learn to PR yeah so well there's electrics coming interpret up in Jerusalem in a few weeks have you had some of the candidates come here because you know make it part of their platform and say it's integrate in everybody wants to I would hope have some kind of environmental peace into their platform or they should it's a crowded city we've got the lie well we've got lots of cars we have a lot of traffic and all that so is that something in terms of PR that you're bringing and then whoever wins is gonna already know about you kind of spread it out there without going for one candidate or another just get them all here at some point yes so I know most of the candidates have already been here and they have met with Tommy he's the CEO of the garden to come in here and listen and it's actually been pretty positive and other than that in Jerusalem we have come together a group of dozens of environmental organizations led by I&I and the Jerusalem Green Fund and we're a big part of that too right and and Aminah how do you say manna manifest manifesto manifests yeah I manifest for an sustainable Jerusalem and we meet with each one of the candidates to tell them about that manifest and to ask them what they think about hot burning issues in Jerusalem and it's been very interesting a lot of them were surprised to hear that some of the things we were talking about have to do with sustainability because people think that sustainability is only green stuff and then when they understand it's other things as well because as I said it's keeping what we need without hurting the next generations it can be about gender equality and it can be about ending poverty and they're like oh so we're doing sustainability and we didn't even know about it so how does gender equality fit in with sustainability ah Wow because that's like de topic or one of the big topics now yes of course if we're talking about a just world if we're talking about a world where we can supply the demands of the current generations and we definitely have to start thinking about how women are being treated and what are their opportunities to fit in the city to fit in society what are the opportunities for our girls and that of course comes into a sustainable lifestyle then you're dealing here that's really it's going to be a project because you have a very conservative small C group here in Israel both in the Arab sector and in the more orthodox sector it's not so quick to have the women go and haven't met say in a workplace with all kinds of different people that's right that must be a real challenge yeah that's right but you'll be surprised there are new wind's coming even from the ultra-orthodox or Arab communities they're not as closed as we tend to think but it's a process and I think once people realize they that it's not threatening okay that they could still be whatever tradition is it's important to them but make their lives better for themselves for their children then that's probably the way to go definitely so you were telling us about a project that you have going here you're gonna be building something in the next few years tell us a little bit yeah so basically I started with people thinking about hubs our co-working spaces when we set up the hub we didn't just set it up we went out and we interviewed our community we interviewed dozens of people and asked them what they were doing what they needed and based on their questions we built what the hub is today so a lot of them were saying that not a lot of people know who's doing what and that there needs to be some sort of an organizing mechanism and that's exactly what we did some were talking about professional development and that's what we did they weren't talking so much about a designated space for their activity but now three and a half years into that people are starting to say okay we'd love to have some co-working spaces in office but if we work or at a traditional co-working space usually have a table where you can sit down with your laptop our community some of them need spaces for R&D for research and development some of them need a greenhouse or a therapeutic kitchen or things you wouldn't imagine so where we there is a green architect his name is they know most elites and he planned the whole designated hub area with reused containers with solar energy recycling water systems and it's gonna be very fine and very beautiful so that people don't think that it's that sustainability is like a dirty muddy thing but that it could actually be a nice surrounding to work at and we're actually working to fundraise for that now and hopefully and then next year we're gonna start building that and it's supposed to take about a year to do all that and that's gonna be another attraction for the garden again the gardens being a place that demonstrates sustainability because imagine dozens of change agents working some of them bringing their bees here some of them setting up an urban food forest someone putting their water collection systems some are gonna put their solar panels here and all of them are gonna demonstrate all that together it's just gonna be another plot of the Botanical Gardens Tinky taking us forward to what we want to be is Israel considered a leader in the areas that you the two of you are talking about here or are we lagging behind other places that's true okay so like weirdly always talking about now in terms of urban sustainability is that something that we can help that people will be coming in here you'll be running conferences and teaching people from Germany and Canada and whatever or are we going out to learn to learn more at this point I think it's all happening both things but I think maybe people from German from Europe let's say it's not that relevant for them because it's a whole different climate but definitely for semi-arid and arid zones in the world I think we can we can teach and we should develop in the future some workshops I know Israeli civility in Africa for decades and helping people even countries we don't have relations with let's just get it done let's feed the people and not necessarily get credit for it but just do it and so I would imagine that you you fit into there as well some of the things that you're doing yeah and if we're talking about sustainable living in cities then probably in Europe it's more advanced than what's happening here in Israel but an environmental hub at a Botanical Gardens is something that's new to the world yeah which is nice I'm being invited to talk all over the world about this model about how a Botanical Gardens can have a hub that's relevant to the city we've been getting invitations from Chicago Botanical Gardens recently we got an invitation from Kew Botanical Gardens in London to just come and learn about the model we have the Botanical Gardens antennas even in Haifa which are learning the hub's model and hopefully when we speak in ten years the whole world will have environmental hubs Lior is very modest I think the network of the app that was compared to a mushroom network of course you have to have some kind of right it's very innovative and very new and the things that it doesn't necessarily need to have one head and one head that managing all but just a network of a lot of things this is very innovative event very new and I've been in the business of botanical garden for the last let's say 20 years and I have never seen anything like that in any other garden or anywhere else it's like an orchestra as beautiful as one musician is having them all together is something really outstanding okay well well in liore thank you so much anything else you want to add before we close it down just about people coming yeah we just want to invite whoever is listening to come and visit us so whether it's just to come and tour the gardens whether it's to come and meet us to take part of the courses to be a part of the hub network to be a support or whatever we're very open to expanding the Jerusalem Botanic Gardens helped and the gardens the family do you have a newsletter or something that you put out and keep people abreast of the things you're doing yeah our website Botanic dot co-taught al has all our activities and we have also another website with the whole garden Connect collection so you can actually browse into God and then look for any any plant you want and see where it grows but I I join the or in inviting all of you to visit us and you know the garden is is the actual gardens but it's also the knowledge and the database in above it so we just visit you know floor of Israel online Botanic COI and join our tours we are we are having tours in Israel every month with the actually the Friends of our God and Israeli Friends of our garden are organizing it a botanical tour every month all over Israel and we have tours abroad which mean usually I'm guiding in the Caucasus in Greece in Turkey even to join our tours what are you doing those tours they're botanic tours the emphasis is on the plant life in those places exactly the emphasis is mainly in nature sometimes in gardens but it's in normal tour I mean we were touring a new area and we enjoyed the culture and the history but the focus is on on flower so if we go to Armenia for example in the Caucasus we enjoy endless carpet of you know lilies or any moenay's different species you know amazing amazing amazing botanical landscapes so it also gives the perspective on Israel because Israeli so tiny and suddenly you go abroad and you see something to be different well that sounds incredible so the for those of you think you've done everything here you go there's something that you haven't done and for those of you who've been to Jerusalem multiple times and I know that some of you have have you been to the Botanical Gardens because the next time it's time to come and of course for those of you who live in Israel you have absolutely no excuse whatsoever okay so thank you everyone thank you the or think will be for a very enlightening talk Eve hair rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network take care of you Betty good bye for now [Music] throughout history says his imperial majesty Haile Selassie it has been the inaction of those who could have acted indifference of those who should have known better the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that has made it possible the evil to triumph while I'm definitely looking 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