Defiant gardens are gardens created in extreme or difficult environmental, social, political, economic, or cultural conditions. These gardens represent adaptation to challenging circumstances, but they can also be viewed from other dimensions as sites of assertion and affirmation.

A picture
There are many kinds of defiant gardens, but my focus is on a selection of those related to war in the first half of the twentieth century:
  • gardens of World War I, built behind the lines of the Western front
  • gardens built in the Warsaw and other ghettos under the Nazis during World War II
  • gardens created in Europe and Asia by prisoners of war and civilian internees in both world wars
  • gardens constructed by Japanese American internees in U.S. internment camps during World War II