This book reviews gardens made during hard times of war and oppression and speaks of a resilience, hope and empowerment. below is a short excerpt.
"Studying the intersection of gardens and war yields great rewards of understanding about humanity and about nature. Life, home, work, hope, and beauty are five attributes that lie dormant in all gardens, awaiting the catalyst that propels them to germinate and allowing us to recognize them as defiant gardens. These gardens can be of any scale, their life spans vary from that of a window box to a valley, and they may be real or imagined.
Life. As living beings we display biophilia, which sociobiologist E. O. Wilson argues is an indisputable, innate affinity for the natural world and especially for its life forms, flora and fauna. The products of the garden sustain us as both food for our bodies and food for our psyches. Our senses guide our behavior, provide pleasure and satisfaction, and allow us to experience ourselves as being of nature and as being witnesses to garden as both noun and verb.
Home. We have deep attachments to the places we call home, and indeed even the nomad has a sense of home. Gar¬dens may be part of our home or reminders of homes we have inhabited. Gardens can be mnemonic devices, conjuring reminders of the place and all the associations we make with it and people, experiences, and history. Away from our desired or permanent home, a garden can be a way of transforming a place into a home, of creating an attachment to a new place and also establishing a connection to our former place.
Work. Garden is a verb as well as a noun. As both physical and mental labor, garden work can provide the particular sense of identity and satisfaction that comes from manual labor. The work represents the symbiotic relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world.
Hope. Gardens take time to conceive, make, develop—and grow. Hope is embodied in the temporal dimension and in the seeming miracle of the transformation from seed to plant to fruit, food, flower, and fragrance. The mere act of making a garden implies a future in which plants will reach fruition and results will be enjoyed. This is true even when we set out plants that may take generations to mature, becoming a real legacy. Gardening is inherently hopeful as a series of affirmative, assertive acts—the seeds will germinate, the plants will enjoy adequate rain and sunshine, nothing will squash or eat them… and we will survive to see all that.
Beauty. Gardens are beautiful. Our response to the natural world that we find or assemble is rooted in our instinctual response to certain conditions. Overlaid with that impulse, like an onion, are layers of experiences, memories, associations we might make, history, and culture that bind us together in groups and societies, and layers that reflect our idiosyncrasies as individuals. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though the beholder may have little awareness of what has created the “eye.” Our awareness of our own attraction to and delight in form, pattern, proportions, intricacy, boldness, craft, and technique can be heightened by contrast and by changes in context. Thus in war, the antithesis of the beautiful—the common garden—may become the highest art. As individual soldiers can engage in heroic acts, so can there be heroic gardens. . . ."
