Like many who have grown up in Middle Eastern cultures, Palestinian Americans Jamal and Tagee Kanj are renowned for their warm and gracious hospitality and for generously sharing the bounty of their garden and table with friends and family.

Jamal, who grew up in the difficult environment of the Nahr El Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, remembers the gardens fondly.

“Around 1970, in summer, if you looked at the camp from half a mile away, you would see green, the green of grape leaves and fruit trees. Every home had a garden,” Jamal, 65, recalled. “All of the Palestinians I know are gardeners. We just like to grow things. I always enjoyed gardening, since I was a child.”

The gardens both supplemented the families’ food and provided respite and relaxation from the harsh realities of life in a crowded, often tense, refugee camp.

Apricot blossoms in Kanj’s garden, one of several varieties of trees he planted.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

That’s why, when Jamal and his wife, Tagee, 55, were looking for their first home to purchase for their family in 2001 in San Diego County, the house was important but the land was even more important. They found it in Blossom Valley, east of Lakeside in East County.

He knew he wanted to plant a garden — a large, edible garden — filled with fruit trees and other plants that evoke their native Palestinian heritage. Among those are herbs and flavorings essential to their native cuisine — oregano, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, basil, sage and mint, plus garlic and tomatoes. And extroverted Tagee is renowned as a master of the cuisine, explained longtime friend Doris Bittar.

Loquats are one of many tree fruits growing in the Kanj family’s property.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“Most Arabs are good cooks,” Tagee explained, deflecting the compliment.

Palestinian refugees whose parents were among the hundreds of thousands dispossessed of their land when Israel was created in 1948, the couple were born and raised in Lebanon, but their families’ roots lie in agriculture in the Galilee region of what is now Israel. Jamal’s family owned citrus and olive groves, while Tagee’s grandparents’ extensive lands produced pomegranates and olives.

In the camp, Jamal helped his father garden, growing fruit trees, tomatoes and even potatoes to feed their family. Tagee’s parents were more prosperous, owning land and a house in Lebanon where they raised their children, avoiding the refugee camps.

Various fig trees provide fruit that the family enjoys eating and using in Middle Eastern dishes.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Neither of Jamal’s parents went to school. His father worked initially as a manual and farm laborer around the camp and later as an ambulance driver for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, while his mother labored to run the household, hauling water and gathering firewood for cooking, heating and washing clothes.

With an eye to their family’s future, his parents were determined to ensure that their seven children, six boys and a girl, received an education, despite the limited opportunities in the refugee camp and persistent strife in the region. His father and elder brothers arranged to send Jamal, the third child, to Baghdad to finish his final year of high school and later, in 1977, to Texas and college for an engineering degree. His father wanted Jamal to become an engineer, likely his own thwarted ambition, while the son was more inclined toward political science and writing, interests he pursued successfully in later years. Not wanting to disappoint his father, he studied engineering, focusing on the water and waste infrastructure desperately needed in the refugee camps.

A newly minted civil engineer, Jamal arrived in San Diego about 1982 to start a job in the city’s public works department. Eventually he rose to chief engineer/program manager of the city of San Diego’s wastewater operation and worked closely with the city manager’s office. All the while, he tended his garden, even experimenting with grafting roses, which continues to capture his imagination.

Kanj has had success with grafting different colors of roses onto a single rosebush.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

After 15 years with the city, he secured a new position in 2001 as director of public works for the Viejas Tribal Government, located in Alpine. The time was right to move to East County from Carmel Mountain to be closer to his job. By then, he and Tagee, a kindergarten and, later, a Head Start teacher whom he met in Lebanon and married in 1990, had three children and were ready to buy a house and plant a larger edible garden.

The 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bath split-level home they found in Blossom Valley sits atop a ridge on about 2½ acres of land, enjoying magnificent views over the valley toward Lake Jennings, El Capitan and nearby mountains.

A fig tree with origins in the West Bank city of Hebron, renowned for its bountiful fig trees.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Built in 1989, the house required no significant interior remodeling, but its landscaping was ripe for a total makeover. They removed the thirsty lawn around the house, replacing it with an elevated level concrete terrace that provided a stable base for raised herb and vegetable boxes and also surrounded the new zero-edge pool and spa they constructed behind the house. Adjoining that, overlooking the lake, they built a deck for enjoying the dramatic views and sunsets, featuring a pergola and outdoor dining area. Jamal replaced the trees lining the long driveway with a row of olive trees, traditional in their culture, and citrus trees.

The garden design, Jamal explained, evolved as he planted, laying out areas for figs, herbs and salad greens. He has always done all the work in the garden himself, with occasional assistance with heavy work from his son and a hired “weedwhacker” to tame any overgrowth.

In those early years, he planted numerous varieties of fruit trees, especially lemon and orange trees, which the family enjoys for eating and juicing.

Young jarjeer, known in English as arugula or rocket;

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

But the garden’s development screeched to a halt in 2005 when Jamal accepted a senior engineering position with a major petroleum company in Bahrain. There, he discovered that the soil and the groundwater were too saline for more than a small flower garden, even for this avid gardener. Instead of gardening, he focused his spare time on writing, completing his memoir of life growing up in the refugee camp. In 2010, he published “Children of Catastrophe: Journey From a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America.” He continues to write on international affairs and the Arab experience.

The family remained in Bahrain until Jamal retired in 2019, and they returned to their Blossom Valley home.

During their 14 years away, they rented the house to a series of tenants. Neglect devastated the garden; only some of the better-established olive and citrus trees and rosebushes survived.

The Kanj family’s 3,000-square-foot home is at the top of a ridge on about 2½ acres in Blossom Valley.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“The tenants probably didn’t want to pay the large water bills,” Jamal said with a laugh.

It was time to start over and refresh their house and bring new life to the garden.

In the house, the couple decided to open up their downstairs living spaces by removing an interior partition — creating, in effect, a great room, and remodeling the kitchen with new appliances and up-to-date fittings.

But the garden needed a total reboot. Retirement provided Jamal the needed time to focus on caring for his beloved garden.

Oregano, used in the spice blend za’atar, grows in Kanj’s garden.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

With her husband’s diligent TLC and a more generous supply of water, Tagee explained, “Many of the trees came back to life after about a year,” including a number of citrus and olive trees.

He also resumed planting, with his choice of trees and plants influenced by his heritage and family requests.

“Many plants are connected to home,” he said.

He replaced the dead olive trees along the driveway with varieties better suited to the region’s climate. Jamal supplemented the surviving orange and lemon trees with replacements and new types of citrus, including an Algerian tangerine, different orange trees, a pomelo, grapefruit and loquat.

This last year, for the first time, they picked black olives from their own maturing trees.

The Kanjes have a passion for figs, a tradition in their homeland. His original fig trees had all died, requiring him to start afresh. He selected varieties from local nurseries that were hardy in the Southern California climate.

The home has views of El Cajon Mountain, aka El Capitan, and Lake Jennings.

(Kristian Carreon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

But a friend gave him a young fig tree with its origins in Hebron, a city in the West Bank, southwest of Jerusalem, that is renowned for its bountiful fig trees. He explained that he hopes this special tree, rooted in his homeland, will grow tall and thrive under his care.

Other fruit trees he’s chosen are more unusual.

“We grow trees producing fruit you rarely find in the markets — guavas, loquat, Algerian tangerines, black Pakistan and white Persian mulberries,” Jamal explained.

Since the family’s return, he has also planted cherry, apricot and both white, or “ice cream,” and red banana trees, as well as strawberry (pink) and white guava varieties.

“The thing I like best is the fruits. They taste so much better than store-bought,” Tagee said. “I love the guavas.”

This year, their son presented him with a janerik plum tree, a small green and sour plum typically grown and celebrated in the Middle East. While Jamal sources most of his trees locally, his son ordered this rarity from a Georgia nursery.

Following his success in grafting different colors of roses onto a single bush, he began experimenting with grafting different varieties of citrus together, including the Algerian tangerine with orange, two varieties of orange, and orange and grapefruit trees.

“Most of the grafts fail,” he admitted with a laugh, but he keeps trying.

While growing fruit trees absorbs much of his attention, Jamal also grows many varieties of herbs for their daily cooking, as well as grapevines both for their fruit and the leaves used for stuffing with rice or meat mixtures.

Oregano is especially important as a main ingredient in za’atar, the spice blend typical of Middle Eastern cuisine. He grows large beds of oregano, which Tagee also adds fresh to salads, often using it in combination with jarjeer, known in English as arugula or rocket, and other salad greens.

To prepare the oregano for za’atar, they harvest the herb, pluck it from its stems and then dry it outside, turning it often for five days and then grinding it into a fine powder. Then Tagee mixes it with sesame seed, sumac imported from the Middle East, a little citric acid and salt, plus a few drops of olive oil.

They store the finished za’atar, fragrant and flavorful, in the freezer before using it to prepare traditional dishes. Or they dip fresh Middle Eastern flatbreads first into specially imported Palestinian olive oil that they obtain through friends and then into the spice mixture. (Palestinian territories are known for olives and olive oils, which are available in the U.S. from Al’ard Products, alardproducts.com).

Za’atar, along with their garden’s produce, featured prominently in the abundant dishes Tagee prepared each day to break their daylong fasts during Ramadan, which recently ended.

With summer quickly approaching, many of their trees are now in flower, with their lemon and guava tree branches bowing under the weight of their bounty.

The Kanj family are ready to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

Sours Larson is a San Diego freelance writer.