Defiant Gardens - by Kenneth I Helphand (Paperback)

About the Book

A history of wartime gardens documents how they humanize landscapes and experience, even under the direst conditions

Book Synopsis

How is it that during a war, one can still find gardens? In the most brutal environments, on both the home front and the battlefield, they continue to flourish. Wartime gardens are dramatic examples of what Kenneth Helphand calls "defiant gardens" -- gardens created in extreme social, political, economic, or cultural conditions. Illustrated with archival photos, this remarkable book examines gardens of war in the 20th century, including extraordinary examples built behind the trenches in World War I, in the Warsaw and other ghettos during World War II, and in Japanese-American internment camps, as well as gardens created by soldiers at their bases and encampments during wars in the Persian Gulf, Vietnam, and Korea. Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association award and other honors, Defiant Gardens proves that these man-made constructs are far more than decorative diversions or simple sanctuaries from the stresses of daily life.

Review Quotes

"Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens--not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe's ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance." -- NPR Morning Edition

"Kenneth Helphand tells Jim Fleming how a photo of a French soldier tending a rose bush in a trench during World War I resulted in his book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime." -- To the Best of Our Knowledge

About the Author

Kenneth Helphand is a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon, where he has taught courses in landscape history, theory, and design since 1974. His other books include Colorado: Visions of an American Landscape, Dreaming Gardens: Landscape Architecture and the Making of Modern Israel, and Yard Street Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space, coauthored with Cynthia Girling. Helphand served as editor of Landscape Journal from 1994 to 2002. He is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and an honorary member of the Israel Association of Landscape Architects. He has received the Bradford Williams Medal and a Graham Foundation grant, as well as distinguished teaching awards from the University of Oregon and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.