'A remarkable book . . . It's a powerful testament to the healing balm of gardening and the resilience of the human spirit in the direst of circumstances.' Financial Times 'Not a happy book and yet it's magically heartening. It makes a gardener question his or her values.' The Times 'This extraordinary book...warm and engaging...like a photograph magicked to life.' Spectator 'Snow has spent ten years as a photographer and filmmaker covering unrest . . . Throughout that time she has sought comfort in green oases and come to understand "how vital gardens are 'against a horrid wilderness' of war". . . There can be few counter-narratives as enchanting and sad as those Snow recounts in War Gardens.' Times Literary Supplement 'For all these victims of war, their gardens are places in which to breathe, providing moments of calm, hope and optimism in a fragile life of horror and uncertainty. For many, it helps them to grieve. Books seldom bring a lump to my throat, but this one did.' Spectator 'What makes War Gardens the most illuminating garden book to be published this year, is the realisation that people's gardens are the antidotes to the horrors of their surroundings.' Country Life A journey through the most unlikely of gardens: the oases of peace people create in the midst of war In this millennium, we have become war weary. From Afghanistan to Iraq, from Ukraine to South Sudan and Syria, from Kashmir to the West Bank, conflict is as contagious and poisonous as Japanese knotweed. Living through it are people just like us with ordinary jobs, ordinary pressures and ordinary lives. Against a new landscape of horror and violence it is up to them to maintain a modicum of normality and colour. For some, gardening is the way to achieve this. Working in the world's most dangerous war zones, freelance war correspondent and photographer Lally Snow has often chanced across a very moving sight, a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit in adversity, a celebration of hope and beauty: a war garden. In Kabul, the royal gardens are tended by a centenarian gardener, though the king is long gone; in Camp Bastion, bored soldiers improvise tiny gardens to give themselves a moment's peace; on both sides of the dividing line in Jerusalem families tend groves of olives and raise beautiful plants from the unforgiving, disputed landscape; in Ukraine, families tend their gardens in the middle of a surreal, frozen war. War Gardens is a surprising, tragic and beautiful journey through the darkest places of the modern world, revealing the ways people make time and space for themselves and for nature even in the middle of destruction. Illustrated with Lally Snow's own award-winning photography, this is a book to treasure.

This War is a Food War...' In 1941 Lord Woolton, Minister for Food, was determined that the Garden Front would save England: 'Dig for Victory' was the slogan, digging for dinner the reality. With food imports dwindling the number of allotments grew, millions opted to 'Spend an Hour with a Hoe' instead of an hour in a queue, and the upper classes turned lawns, tennis courts and stately gardens over to agriculture. The national diet was transformed, with swedes grown in the place of oranges and hapless children sucking on carrot lollies; evacuees grew their own meals and bomb sites sprouted allotments. Vegetables ruled the airwaves with Mr Middleton's 'In Your Garden' whilst Home Guard potatoes became the favourites of the Kitchen Front. This is a fully illustrated look at the time when gardening saved Britain.

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

This 1919 book describes both the success of the war garden in helping to reduce food shortages during the World War I period and the necessity for maintaining these gardens during peacetime.

Sometimes, to move forward, we must look back. Gardening activity during American involvement in World War I (1917-1919) is vital to understanding current work in agriculture and food systems. The origins of the American Victory Gardens of World War II lie in the Liberty Garden program during World War I. This book examines the National War Garden Commission, the United States School Garden Army, and the Woman's Land Army (which some women used to press for suffrage). The urgency of wartime mobilization enabled proponents to promote food production as a vital national security issue. The connection between the nation's food readiness and national security resonated within the U.S., struggling to unite urban and rural interests, grappling with the challenges presented by millions of immigrants, and considering the country's global role. The same message--that food production is vital to national security--can resonate today. These World War I programs resulted in a national gardening ethos that transformed the American food system.

Beans as bullets', 'Vegetables for Victory' and 'Cloches against Hitler': these slogans convey just how vital gardening and growing food were to the British war effort during the Second World War. Exhorted to 'Grow More Food', then to 'Dig for Victory', Britain's 'allotment army' was soon out in force, growing as many vegetables as possible in suburban allotments, private gardens, even the grounds of stately homes. Richly illustrated with contemporary photographs and ephemera relating to the 'Dig For Victory' campaign, this expertly researched, highly engaging and informative account also includes archive images of home front gardening, garden produce and advertisements.