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In his groundbreaking book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime Kenneth Helphand explores the significance of planting gardens against the backdrop of war. In this lecture based on his book, Helphand will share unforgettable stories – and images:

• a French soldier laying out a flower bed behind the lines of World War I's Western Front
• a Jewish couple clearing rubble to plant a garden in the Lodz ghetto
• victory gardens at Manzanar, created by Japanese American internees and photographed by Dorothea Lange
• an American soldier trimming a tiny plot of grass at a camp north of Badhdad

“Gardens promise beauty where there is none, hope over despair, optimism over pessimism, and finally life in the face of death,” Helphand said. “In trenches, ghettos, and camps, defiant gardens attempt to create normalcy in the midst of madness and order out of chaos.”

Kenneth Helphand is the Knight Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon, where he has taught courses in landscape history, theory and design since 1974. He is a graduate of Brandeis University (1968) and Harvard's Graduate School of Design (MLA 1972). Helphand has guest lectured at dozens of universities and is a frequent visiting professor at the Israel Institute of Technology, Technion University. He is the author of numerous of articles and reviews on topics in landscape history and theory with a particular interest in the contemporary American landscape. In addition to Defiant Gardens Helphand has written Colorado: Visions of an American Landscape (1991), Dreaming Gardens: Landscape Architecture & the Making of Modern Israel (2002), and, with Cynthia Girling, Yard Street Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space (1994). Helphand served as editor of Landscape Journal from 1994 –2002. 

Helphand is the recipient of distinguished teaching awards from the University of Oregon (1993) and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (1997). He is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, an Honorary Member of the Israel Association of Landscape Architects and Chair of the Senior Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks. He is a recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal and a Graham Foundation Grant.