"Here I Want to Live and Die"
The Roses in the Garden of Hedwig Höss at the Villa beside Auschwitz
In Orwell's Roses Rebecca Solnit interprets gardening as "a gesture of hope, that these seeds planted will sprout and grow, this tree will bear fruit, that spring will come" — an activity deeply invested in the future. Orwell himself in an essay A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946) makes a plea in favour of tree-planting, arguing that the planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble.
I would argue this logic does not apply to Hedwig Höss and her gardening endeavors.
Hedwig was born on 3 March 1908 in Ludwigsburg, Württemberg, into a conservative Catholic family. In the late 1920s she gravitated towards the Artaman movement — an ideology proclaiming a return to the land, a celebration of agricultural labour, and a 'rooted' existence. It was there that she met Rudolf Höss. Both were committed to the nationalist movement rooted in the ideology of Blut und Boden — "Blood and Soil."