Bomb craters, vacant lots, refugee camps, trenches, wastelands, dumps, cracks in the sidewalk: these are the unlikely locales of what landscape architect Kenneth Helphand calls "defiant gardens."

"They are gardens created in extreme environmental, social, political, cultural or economic conditions," he told an audience filling the Michigan Theater screening room February 16. "They are acts of adaptation to their challenging circumstances, but they can also be viewed as affirmations of human resilience."

Presenting the School of Natural Resources and Environment Whittemore Lecture, part of the Dean's Speaker Series, Helphand is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon and author of Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime.

His illustrated lecture focused on gardens built behind the trenches in World War I, in the Warsaw and other ghettos built by the Nazis in World War II, and in the Japanese-American internment camps during the same period. His extensively researched history is compiled entirely from first person accounts.

The juxtaposition is striking. "War is certainly the most horrific of environmental and human conditions; war is insane, brutal, appalling. Gardens are the opposite: soothing, familiar, and comprehensible.

"Gardens are desired but rarely seen as essential," he continued. "They are more likely regarded as a luxury or a frill. But gardens created in extreme circumstances by soldiers, prisoners of war and civilian detainees show an attempt to create something normal in the midst of madness."

They provided more than sustenance, he emphasized. "People planted vegetables because they were starving, but they also planted flowers. They created beauty that offered solace in a hostile environment. The gardens sometimes also defied the laws of nature, emerging in such extreme and inhospitable climates as the Sahara desert."

The lessons from studying gardens in war can be summed up in five deceptively simple themes: life, hope, home, work, and beauty, Helphand said. Gardens are alive; they represent home and hope; they require work which yields a sense of purpose and artistry.

"The efforts were often valiant, the results meager and short lived, but the process was nonetheless inspiring. In fact, the brief lifespan of these gardens may in fact accentuate their significance," he noted.

"All of these gardens, grand or small, were acts of resistance, helping people maintain integrity and self-respect. They were tangible symbols of hope. Hope is preparation for the future, not naivve optimism."

By Pat Materka