DATE: 4 p.m. Feb. 16, 2007.

EVENT: For many, gardening is a simple meditative act?a way to get in touch with nature. Others may think of gardening as a mundane chore. Whatever the view, there’s more than meets the eye. For instance, the compulsion to create a garden during wartime reveals something vital about the human spirit.

Kenneth Helphand’s critically acclaimed book, “Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime,” argues that planting and cultivating a garden is a symbol of resiliency, and ultimately, an act of resistance amid a landscape of fear, destruction and disorder.

Helphand, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon, comes to the University of Michigan to discuss his findings in a lecture and slide presentation that illuminates the “astonishing tenacity required to create life in the face of death,” according to Booklist.

In his book, Helphand explores the reasons people create gardens in extreme social, political, economic and cultural conditions. He examines the construction of gardens in the trenches in World War I, and in Warsaw ghettos and Japanese-American internment camps during World II. He also looks at unique gardens planted by soldiers during the Korea, Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

PLACE: Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, downtown Ann Arbor. Free and open to the public.

SPONSORS: U-M’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and Arts on Earth, a new campuswide initiative at U-M. Through performing and visual arts events and exhibits, and specially-designed learning events, Arts on Earth explores topics such as science, technology and the arts; art and commerce; art and conscience; the intrinsic value of the arts; and, sociocultural reach of the arts.

MEDIA: Helphand is available for interviews. To arrange an interview, please contact Theresa Reid, (734) 615-4861, [email protected].

WEB: For more on Arts on Earth, visit: www.artsonearth.org