An Ecological Comparison of Two Abandoned Heritage Orchards in Northern Israel

Heritage, 2025, 8, 76.

https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8020076

Eli Ashkenazi , Ido Wachtel, Guy Bar-Oz, Roy Marom, and Liora Kolska Horwitz

The article discusses two relict traditional Palestinian orchards: one was abandoned following the 1948 war when the farmers were exiled to Lebanon, and the second was tended by farmers up until the early 1970s. The orchards are located in two different Mediterranean phytogeographic regions, one in the hilly Upper Galilee and the other on the slopes of Mount Carmel in the hinterland of the Mediterranean coast. The found differences in the species composition and spatial layout of the trees suggests the knowledge the farmers possessed of their respective environments was empowering and gainfully applied to promote various conservation and preservation strategies in these locales.

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