Brooklyn Queens Land Trust

Community Gardening During Hard Times Feeds Families

Feb 12, 2009

It has been found that one benefit of community gardens to all and particularly to people who've lost their jobs and/or are worried about feeding their families - "They serve to improve the health and spirit of participants by creating feelings of usefulness, productivity, and importance while also providing opportunities for food and work."

The Brooklyn Queens Land Trust promotes sustainable agriculture and conserving open space tas community gardens for public use. Instead of using chemical fertilizers, most of the 34 (29 in Brooklyn, five in Queens) community gardens use and/or make compost, whether using worms(vermi-compost) or vegetable and fruit scraps. Our non-profit organization reaches out to the communities surrounding our member gardens to come to our garden-related workshops, classes and events. The gardens have a profound impact on household budgets: they reduce weekly food bills, and gardeners can earn money selling their garden produce, usually at rates lower than found in organic food stores.

Community gardening is an old idea. While following our country's current economic woes and looking for information to share with community gardeners, I found a website in progress at
(http://SidewalkSprouts.wordpress.com/history/relief-garden). Among other things, it is loaded with information about community gardening during other hard economic times including the Great Depression 1929-1939. At that time, the gardens were called Depression Relief Gardens... welfare garden plots, vacant lot gardens, and subsistence gardens.

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia[1] during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" ?— in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. Making victory gardens became a part of daily life on the home front. These gardens produced up to 40 percent of all the vegetable produce being consumed nationally[2].

Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor Roosevelt's institution of a Victory Garden on the White House grounds, fearing that such a movement would hurt the food industry[3], basic information about gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture, as well as by agribusiness corporations such as International Harvester and Beech-Nut.

President Wilson ?“called for ever American to contribute in the war to establish democracy and human rights.?” In a proclamation, President Woodrow Wilson said to Americans, ?“Everyone who creates or cultivates a garden helps?… This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance.?”

The US Department of Agriculture formed a committee on pubic information to help plant ?“a million new backyard and vacant lot gardens.?” (Tucker 1993: 124) It was thought that victory gardens would not only feed America so that we could send food abroad, but also that we could save on fuel and free transportation and middleman jobs to help with the war effort.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant "Riverside" were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.


In 1946, with the war over, many residents did not plant Victory Gardens in expectation of greater produce availability. However, shortages remained in the United Kingdom.

The Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay Fens of Boston, Massachusetts and the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, remain active as the last surviving public examples from World War II. Most plots in the Fenway Victory Gardens now feature flowers instead of vegetables while the Dowling Community Garden retains its focus on vegetables.

Since the turn of the century there has existed a growing interest in Victory Gardens. A grassroots campaign promoting such gardens has recently sprung up in the form of new Victory Gardens in public spaces, Victory Garden websites and blogs, as well as petitions to both renew a national campaign for the Victory Garden and to encourage the re-establishment of a Victory Garden on the White House lawn.

Notes

Books
1. " Victory gardens" Australian War Memorial Encylopedia

Warner,Sam Bass, Jr. >I>To Dwell is to Garden: A History of Boston?’s Community Gardens. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Bassett, Thomas J. ?“Reaping on the Margins: A Century of Community Gardening in America.?” Landscape, 1981 v25 n2. 1-8.

Lawson, Laura. 2005. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America. University of California Press.

Tucker, David M. Kitchen Gardening in America: A History. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1993.

FOR HUNGER-PROOF CITIES Sustainable Urban Food Systems Edited by Mustafa Koc, Rod MacRae, Luc J.A. Mougeot, and Jennifer Welsh.

A section in the 252 pp. speaks about ecological and health concerns of food systems and urban farming. It examine urban agriculture and food security from an urban perspective. It examines existing local food systems and ways to improve the availability and accessibility of food for city dwellers. It looks at methods to improve community-supported agriculture and cooperation between urban and rural populations.


The Contribution of Urban Agriculture to Gardeners, Their Households, and Surrounding Communities: The Case of Havana, Cuba. Angela Moskow 2000.[4]

Cuba began promoting urban food production in 1991. Research was conducted in Havana to trace the contributions of the gardens to the nutritional intake of the gardeners?’ households and the gardeners?’ sense of control of their lives and to determine the effects of these gardens on the surrounding communities.

This research was conducted with funding from the Oberlin College Alumni Fund?’s Henry J. Haskell Fellowship, the Jastro-Shields Graduate Research Scholarship Fund, and the International Agricultural Development Graduate Group.



Other references:

Websites:

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

3. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

4. Full research reporting can be found at http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30598-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html


Garden Warriors of Yesteryear.
http://homepage.mac.com/cityfarmer/PhotoAlbum34.html

WWI and WWI victory garden pictures
Wikipedia. Victory Gardens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

Hardly anything on Victory Gardens from World War I.


Urban Agriculture photos.

http://homepage.mac.com/cityfarmer/PhotoAlbum42.html

Contains some good random photos of urban agriculture all over the world and throughout history?… no other details sorry.


Williamson, Erin A. A Deeper Ecology: Community Gardens in the Urban Environment. U Delaware.

As a student, Williamson wrote a paper - found of the City Farmer website., which provides history and insight into the need for and role of community gardens in North America.

http://www.cityfarmer.org/erin.html


Information for this article was collected from numerous sites, books, magazines and pamphlets. Most were attributed here. If any were forgotten, please forgive the oversight. All of this information is for educational purposes only.