Canaan Botanical Gardens

There is a new botanical garden park near Jenin, featuring native Marj Ibn Amer plantings. The growing Canaan Botanical Gardens project is an inspiring and educational site for the Palestinian farming communities and a source of pride for Palestine. We are proud to support it to further our education mission. There are already over 1000 trees planted!

There are five parts to the garden:
• Reception Garden
• Floral Garden
• Forest Glade Garden
• Apothecary’s Garden with medicinal and aromatic plants
• and Oak Forest & Swamp Forest

Oak forests have ancient roots in Palestine. The historic Marj Ibn Amer plain – the main valley including Jenin and Al Jalamah – was an oak forest millions of years ago. You can tell because of it’s current dense clay soil.

In this entire valley there is a single ancient oak tree – the people call it the Davori Oak, estimated to be 2000 years old.

In 2025, the Botanical Garden went to collect seeds from this native oak tree. They couldn’t find any on the tree, but found 15 oak kernels under the tree. These were planted in pockets and 6 came up. They were nurtured to plant in spring 2026. All 6 seedlings survived, but sadly, this spring the big oak died. It seems the tree knew it’s regeneration was in progress, and it could leave this earth.