In July, 2011, the first Libyan civil war was intensifying, and a United Nations refugee camp called Choucha, just across Libya’s border with Tunisia, was uncomfortably packed. Standard-issue tents billowed in the hot wind, their thick, beige walls barely distinguishable from the sand below. As refugees—fleeing violence and brutality in Libya’s cities and countryside—ambled about in the scorching midday heat, the photographer Henk Wildschut moved slowly through the camp. He had travelled to Tunisia specifically to see this settlement, and a press officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees walked alongside him, pointing out communal bathrooms and wells. Then, among the monotonous sandy tones, Wildschut spotted bursts of pink, purple, and pale green. Buckets overflowed with verdant tendrils; small green shoots poked through the dusty ground. Outside one tent, someone had carefully wrapped twine around spindly stakes to support a sprig of leaves topped with pastel-purple petals. It seemed impossible that such plants could survive in the harsh summers of the Tunisian desert, and yet here they were, carefully tended and meticulously arranged. Wildschut turned to the press officer and asked about the plants. When did they start appearing? The officer stared at him blankly. “Gardens?” he said. “I’ve never noticed them.”
Galvanized by this discovery, Wildschut began visiting other camps around the world, including Za’atari, in Jordan, and several communities in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. He self-published the resulting project in a volume called “Rooted.” Wildschut had expected that gardens would be more common in camps with longer-term residents (some of the migrants in Choucha had lived there for a year or more), but he was surprised to meet a man in an encampment outside Calais, France, who had carefully tended a small patch of grass, even though he knew he’d likely have to leave before too long. Wildschut’s travels revealed that many refugees cultivated green spaces for themselves, regardless of how long they would stay. “The gardens allow these people to quite literally put down roots,” Wildschut told me. “They are a symbol that says, ‘I belong here, at least for a short while.’ ”
