Honest Truth

A garden is a place of tranquillity, but for some it’s a lifeline. In her latest book, war correspondent and photographer Lally Snow reveals some of the world’s most unlikely gardens amidst a landscape of violence and horror. She tells Sally Mcdonald why they are important Why did you want to write this book?

The book came after seven years of self-funding my own interest in photographing gardens in war zones. The idea for this came on the back of having worked as a photojournalist, filmmaker and reporter in some of the world’s most hostile places. I began to realise how little impact the images we see on the news have as we have become so desensitised to violence.

I wanted to challenge people’s perceptions and document conflict with out “showing” it. I wanted to make people look at war, to re-engage with it at least, through something surprising and beautiful. It was also personal because I too had become tired of violence. Through photographing gardens I found my own sense of calm.

How did you select the gardens that appear in this book?

I worked with local fixers in Afghanistan, Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine. Because I lived in Afghanistan I had the luxury of time and a vast network of friends and colleagues who would also tell me about gardens they had come across. In Israel I quite literally drove around looking for pretty or unusual gardens. A lot of the gardeners I met would tell me about their own friends who had bigger or