We are delighted to welcome Rachel Ip, author of The Last Garden to the blog to talk about the horticultural inspirations behind the book.

I wrote The Last Garden after reading about real gardens made in wartime and conflict. By their very nature, these gardens are not always documented or recorded, and I hope The Last Garden can shine a light on the incredible true stories behind them.

The Last Garden follows the story of a little girl who tends the last garden in a war-torn city. As the city breaks, everyone is forced to leave and soon the girl must leave her beautiful garden behind. Though the garden is empty and alone, its seeds scatter throughout the city and roots begin to take hold.

Slowly, as people return, the city begins to bloom again, and the girl comes home to her garden.

The research

War gardens (or conflict gardens as they’re sometimes called) have existed all over the world, some created by individuals, some bringing whole communities together. Initially inspired by news articles about gardens in Syria, I started researching historical and contemporary conflict gardens.

I contacted the Imperial War Museum and spoke to their photography archivists. I searched their online catalogues for historical photos and trawled written records of photos that were yet to be digitised. I also contacted the Royal Horticultural Society, and searched their incredible photography archive in London. 

I found gardens on rooftops and windowsills, in school grounds and in bomb craters. From camp and prison gardens in Singapore to peacebuilding gardens in Sudan, from the gardens in Polish and Lithuanian ghettos of WWII to victory gardens across the UK, US and Canada, these gardens each have their own unique story.

In Hong Kong, where I live, prisoners in WWII planted gardens on the rooftop of Stanley prison, smuggling seeds from their food rations. In the UK, “Open spaces everywhere were transformed into allotments, from domestic gardens to public parks – even the lawns outside the Tower of London were turned into vegetable patches.”^[1] 

The Great Escape

In a prison camp in Germany in WWII, prisoners dug tunnels to escape the camp and concealed the tunnel dirt by working it into the soil of the garden. “While providing a long-term source of food and activity for prisoners, gardening also ironically cultivated the hope of escape by providing a cover for those intent on tunnelling out.”^[2] This may sound like a familiar story, as it was later made into the film: The Great Escape.

Hope and optimism

Gardens are uniquely hopeful. The very act of planting is hopeful. There is hope that something will grow, that someone will be there to see it, to enjoy it, or to harvest it.

Gardens in conflict zones can have many layers of meaning to those involved. They can provide food security, where access to food may be limited. They can provide refuge and solace; hope and optimism; a little bit of beauty.

The Last Garden, beautifully illustrated by Anneli Bray, commemorates the many war gardens and gardens for peace-building around the world.  Anneli Bray was recently longlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize for her illustrations for The Last Garden: https://www.klausfluggeprize.co.uk/longlist-2021/

In the words of Audrey Hepburn: “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

Find out more about the real gardens behind the story in the classroom resources and in the blog about war gardens on Rachel’s website.