Zohriya Garden Becomes a Canvas for Zamalek’s Green Art Community

Every two weeks, a group of creatives meet at Zohriya Garden in Zamalek to talk, work on their art projects and simply exist in a green space. Under the name 'Green Art', these picnics are a space for sustainable community, where everyone creates art out of scrap material that would have otherwise gone to waste.   “Visiting Zohriya Garden was part of my lifestyle, and now it has become part of others’ too,” Kholoud Reda, the mixed media artist who founded Green Art, tells CairoScene. “That means so much to me. I feel like I found myself in Cairo’s gardens.” Reda started hosting the picnics in March 2024, after realising that she felt her most creative and aligned in green spaces, and that others might feel the same. To her, these picnics were a space for community, whether people utilised that through actual conversation and collaboration, or merely existing in the supportive presence of others. In October 2024, it was announced that Zohriya Garden will be closed for renovations. People worried this would entail the destruction of the historic garden's natural landscape, and began signing petitions to preserve Zohriya as it is. “We held a picnic right after hearing word that Zohrita might shut down,” Reda recalls. “That was the biggest turnout we had ever seen. It was like people were either there to say goodbye, or to prove that they were there. Over time, the latter became an integral part of the picnics.”   While Zohriya is still open and well, its visitors continue to savour every encounter, celebrating the garden as they've always known it. Green Art's recent visits embody the same sense of intentional appreciation; in a recent collaborative workshop with artist Fatma Abo Doma, Reda stitched together a map of the garden. After she was done, everyone at the workshop got a chance to etch their fondest memories with Zohriya onto the tapestry.   “So many more people now know and care about Zohriya Garden,” Reda says. “It’s no longer my secret place, but I’m okay with that.”