The postcard beauty of the AUB campus. The Lee Observatory, then and now. College Hall, then and now.

A little more than a century ago, the American University of Beirut’s campus was barren, strewn with rocks but little else.  Today, thanks to the planting, care and supervision of generations of scientists, gardeners, students and the wider community, it has become the  verdant jewel of the entire region. 

While there is much to appreciate, however, there is also grave concern that the landscape is aging and many plants and trees – particularly in middle campus – are in a state of decline. The cause in part, says Jala Makhzoumi, coordinator of the AUB’s Landscape Design and Ecological Management Program, is a lack of sustained and appropriate maintenance and care especially during the civil war.

Heeding the urgency, Makhzoumi and Salma Talhouk, professor of Landscape Horticulture and Conservation, have initiated a working document proposing an evaluation of the existing landscape and the development of a future vision for the campus. Last summer, they began assembling the document that is at once a history of the landscape, an inventory of the existing hard and soft scapes - including paved surfaces, walkways, paths and plants, shrubs and trees - as well as an outline for what should happen next.

“Now is the time to decide our future vision,” says Makhzoumi, who sees the AUB campus as a site that holds a wealth of history, culture and the potential to place the University at the forefront of conservation and sustainability in the region.

The campus, she insists, is a microcosm of Lebanon’s diversity and lends itself well to the use of native plants. Like Lebanon, AUB contains steep out crops, coastal areas, terraced hills, and a typical Mediterranean ravine. 

“There is no doubt that the AUB landscape is cherished by everyone, but beyond that people often do not know what it is, how it developed, or that it needs to be managed,” says Makhzoumi, a professor of Agriculture and Food Sciences.

For Talhouk, a concern for the natural landscape has been the tradition at AUB: “There has always been a culture around this, but it was not called biodiversity in the past.”

Makhzoumi and Talhouk propose that the only possible alternative for the future of AUB’s Middle Campus Landscape, or AMICAL, is to create a sustainable ecological landscape of native plants that serves an educational and historical purpose – which is, by definition, a botanical garden. Their reasons are fourfold: using native plants is cost effective in that they will require no irrigation and long term maintenance; native plants look beautiful in their natural surrounding; promoting indigenous landscapes is in direct contrast to the move towards globalization and the standardization of green spaces; and such a landscape would facilitate the University’s move towards campus-wide sustainable management.

As AUB set its sight on taking the lead, both nationally and regionally, in advocating sustainability and the prudent management of resources, the campus’s landscape lends an excellent opportunity.

“The campus is a living example of sustainability where native plants are well adapted to the area, can deal with the shortage of water and salinity, and require minimal maintenance,” says Makhzoumi. “We can reinstate it as a series of ecosystems, that is, habitats, with plants and insects, and things decomposing. Like nature, it does not need to be pristine.”

As such, the campus can become a model for the use of native plants in landscaping, a concept that is being embraced elsewhere but is still new to the region. In the age of globalization, Makhzoumi says, there is concern for the destruction of native landscapes and a call to restore threatened ecosystems and habitats.   

“We need to overcome the standardization that is ruining landscapes,” she says. “We need to go for a living landscape. One that grows and dies in bits, dries in summer, flowers in spring, and greens in winter – like in the Mediterranean.” 

“What I am proposing does not cost a thing, but requires awareness,” she adds, noting that she hopes to create greater campus and community awareness toward the history and potential of the AUB landscape.

To that end, Makhzoumi has begun documenting the history of the landscape.  But this is a task she cannot complete on her own. It requires the assistance of faculty, students, alumni and the community at large to collect detailed histories of past interactions with the landscape. Although, she has written a broad historical overview, she hopes to add details with stories from the community. 

AUB’s landscape history, explains Makhzoumi, can be divided into three revealing phases:  the agrarian productive landscape between the founding of AUB in 1876 through to the 1940s, the ornamental exotic landscape of the 1950s and 1960s, and the 21st century ecological native landscape. 

When Bliss purchased the campus, although his primary focus was building faculties, he was also reluctant to keep the land bare. Inspired by the beauty of Lebanon’s rural landscapes, he planted olive and fruit trees, and grape vines. He planted the cheapest, most sustainable landscape, but also reaped nourishment from what was cultivated. 

In the beginning, according to Makhzoumi’s research, holes had to be chiseled out of solid rock for the trees to be planted.  However, the debris from the agriculture eventually created a rich soil that had the potential to sustain exotics.

“Gradually, people brought with them seeds from places they had visited and new plants were introduced,” she explained, noting that the popular banyan tree on campus may have been brought by the British via India. 

Through the 60s and 70s, as Beirut experienced an economic boom, so too did the AUB campus. A landscape department was established within the municipality of Beirut, and many plants from outside Lebanon were brought in. This was a time when a gardenesque, ornamental landscape became favored much like the present upper campus.  

But then came the civil war, and things were at a standstill. 

Now 30 years later, there may no longer be a boom, and resources may be scarce, but this has not stopped Makhzoumi and Talhouk from proceeding with the work at hand.

With a draft of historical overview ongoing, they, in collaboration with the Facilities Planning and Design Unit, have turned their attention to identifying all the plants and recording them in a data base, including native flora such as the wild almond, pistachio, carob trees and onion. To date they have counted 130 species of woody plants, and 9,000 specimens of trees, plants and shrubs. 

Makhzoumi emphasizes that this is not the first time such a process has occurred.  Decades ago Charles Abou Chaar, an AUB professor of biology, wrote a book listing the woody plants on campus.

“It has since been reprinted and is the only one available detailing the campus’s trees and shrubs,” she says. 

But, their process hasn’t been without its hiccups. One roadblock has been the concept of landscape itself - a word for which there is no Arabic equivalent. 

“The term is new to the region,” says Makhzoumi. 

Such challenges have only encouraged her to be more creative in her approach. A university wide student competition is being planned for the fall that will invite individual interpretations of the AUB Campus, its present and future vision. She hopes that the competition will familiarize the community with new terms and encourage the contemplation of AUB’s landscape in general. 

For now, Makhzoumi believes with such collective efforts, the university will be moving in the right direction. As such, and possibly in the near future, the campus will be recognized across the region for its progressive landscaping ideas and techniques.