BEIRUT — Michel Ayoub has lived in Baskinta his whole life. Ask anyone for the Ayoub family in this small, picturesque village, and they will point you down the hill to a secluded restaurant called al-Nahr.

The restaurant’s name — meaning "The River" — is well chosen. It is impossible to escape the sound of running water. Ayoub has built a series of channels to draw attention to this natural feature, and restaurant-goers must cross streams and navigate fish ponds to get to their tables.

But the restaurant is not Ayoub's only project. He bought 56 hectares acres of land (138.3 acres) 25 years ago in an area known locally as El-Assi. “I have always loved El-Assi — you can’t imagine how beautiful it is. There are numerous plant varieties and different rock strata — water trickles out of the rock and rises from springs in the ground. It is very, very beautiful,” he says.

Without plans to develop the land, Ayoub let it go fallow. “I kept it for several years without doing anything. Soon the pine trees had grown very large, and we had no choice but to make small interventions to help other plants survive. We would go up the pine trees to thin out their branches and take away the dead parts,” he explained to Al-Monitor.