Jerusalem, Israel - Since 2008, members of the Youth Federation for World Peace in Jerusalem have been volunteering to keep the historic Hansen Garden in Jerusalem alive through planting, maintaining, digging, and preservation old cisterns, windows, and so on. This December 24, 2010, we once again planted different types of flowers to beautify the garden with freesia, cyclamen, iris, and much more.
We were happy to see that our efforts from last year's planting finally bore fruit. We could appreciate the beauty of the cyclamen that sprouted after only two days of rain in the whole rainy season in Israel, the cistern that we reinforced with volunteers from abroad, and the digging site.
The Hansen Garden used to be the Hansen Hospital for Lepers, more accurately Hansen's disease, not leprosy. It was built in 1887 and it closed on 1980. Since then the hospital remained as a historical site. The Ministry of Health granted permission in September 2003 to cultivate the gardens, and the Jerusalem branch of the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI) was chosen to oversee the project.
We hope to continue our ongoing collaboration with the garden and to keep it alive for others to see it and for them to admire God's creation. Our inspiration in part comes from the novel by the English author Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden.
Note: The garden includes two acres of stone terraces, water cisterns, and a variety of flora and fauna, including trees over 130 years old. Built on what was then the outskirts of Jerusalem, it is now in the affluent neighborhood of Talbiya. The Hansen Garden is one of Jerusalem's approximately 1,400 parks and gardens.