The garden created in Zhytomyr region by Oksana Yazykova during the war was included in the international publication The World’s Best Gardens — although it did not emerge as an artistic concept. Oksana and her husband Oleksii are farmers who have been developing their agricultural enterprise in the village of Starosillia for more than twenty years. In 2022, when a missile killed people in a neighboring village, her husband went out to the fields every day under shelling — because the sowing season cannot wait. 

Oksana lived in constant fear. At that time, her husband suggested that she create a small garden on the farm’s territory. Thus, in May 2022, amid explosions and the sowing season, a garden appeared that became her personal therapy — and later part of an ecological space. 

Later, Oksana noticed an unremarkable building clad in old slate. The premises turned out to be a real treasure. It was a century-old wooden house that, with the help of fellow villagers, was transformed into an ethnographic museum. This is a story about how a Ukrainian garden that grew during the war became a symbol of life. In 2025, this handcrafted landscape received the Grand Prix of the Landscape Congress and was included in a collection of the 300 most interesting contemporary gardens from around the world.