The Garden of Life in Times of Death and Despair

 

Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, by Kenneth Helphand

“To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom.”?EUR??,,????'??+ Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years

A bomb crater in London (1942) became a kitchen garden. Photo: Imperial War Museum.

Whether a soldier at the front, a London resident during the Blitz, or prisoners of wars, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime (March 2006) by Kenneth Helphand tells the stories of people growing various plants during times of crisis and life and death struggles?EUR??,,????'??+not just victory gardens, but also gardens such as the plant nursery of Polish Jews trapped in a ghetto by the Nazis, rock gardens by Americans of Japanese ancestry held in desert camps in California during WWII, or a G.I. in Iraq growing a little plot of grass to remind him of the verdant hills of home.