Palestine’s seed library — in pictures

The Palestinian agriculturalist, who is also a writer and photographer, and holds jars of heirloom seeds that include spinach, hummus and chard.

The seed library intends to save seeds and maintain traditional forms of agriculture which could be lost, while educating young Palestinians about their agricultural heritage.

Sansour spent time with growers in Uruguay and Honduras and enrolled into a PhD in Agriculture and Life Sciences in the US. However, she decided to leave the programme and return to the Palestinian territories to learn more about her ancestors’ ways of growing instead.

“I left my PhD programme because I realised academia wasn’t for me — I wanted to be working with people on the ground, doing something.

“I was in a class on botany — they put aside a slide show of zaatar, the plant they said some cultures eat. Something in me felt upset and offended. I thought I don’t need to be here, I can go back to Palestine and learn.”

Sansour has been collecting heirloom seeds and running workshops once a month with teachers in the Bethlehem area. She has encouraged the students to carry out an oral history project — recording stories on video with their elders about their growing methods and the diversity of crops they grew in the past, while also collecting heirloom seeds discovered during the process.

With help from the Qattan Foundation, an independent development organisation focused on culture and education, Sansour will launch the seed library in June with an exhibition of heirloom seed varieties at the foundation’s headquarters in Ramallah.

Vivien Sansour is passionate about plants and in less than six weeks, she will launch a year-long project — pioneering the first Palestinian heirloom seed library and education programme in Ramallah. All photos by Heidi Levine for The National