[Garden] They're baaa-aack, victory gardens

[J. Rochon]

  Digging their way out of recession

Feb 26th 2009 | LITTLE ROCK
 From /The Economist/ print edition


    Allotments by any other name


IN 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged a return to the “victory gardens” 
that had become popular during the first world war, when the country 
faced food shortages. Mrs Roosevelt planted a garden at the White House; 
some 20m Americans followed her lead, and by the end of the war grew 40% 
of the nation’s vegetables.

Now a grassroots movement wants Barack Obama to plant another White 
House victory garden. The new secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, 
announced recently that his department would create “The People’s 
Garden” out of a paved area outside their building. And he won’t stop 
there. Mr Vilsack wants there to be a community garden at each of the 
department’s offices around the world.

Margaret Lloyd, a researcher on victory gardens at the University of 
California at Davis, finds many reasons for this new national trend. The 
recession is one; but people are also worried about food safety, want to 
eat more healthily, and are bothered about climate change. This may be a 
way to make a difference.

If Washington needs further inspiration it might examine the movement in 
Bill Clinton’s former stamping-ground. Although Arkansas is an 
agricultural state, urban gardening has not always been popular. But now 
victory gardens are springing up in backyards, school grounds and even 
on front lawns in posh neighbourhoods. Many gardeners are focusing on 
“heirloom” plants—rare varieties from earlier times that do not appeal 
to agribusiness.

Classes are being offered on canning vegetables and raising chickens. 
The Station, a new grocery store about to open in Little Rock, will sell 
primarily local foods. Heifer International, a non-profit group that 
hopes to fight world hunger and poverty through self-reliance and 
sustainability, will host a conference in the city later this year to 
encourage the use of local produce in school cafeterias.

The two-acre Dunbar Community Garden in Little Rock has served as a 
model for several years. More than 600 students a month have learned 
about gardening there. The students can take these lessons home and 
recreate them in their own back yards. The garden, attached to an 
elementary and middle school, allows inner-city students to taste 
fresh-grown fruit and vegetables, sometimes for the first time in their 
lives. Produce grown in the summer months is sold to local restaurants.

Perhaps the most positive aspect of the garden movement comes from 
ventures like the Backyard Garden Project, which helps inner-city 
families start gardens for self-sufficiency. Ms Lloyd says that the most 
important promoter of projects like those in Little Rock should be Mr 
Obama. “It would be great to have a farmer-in-chief,” says Ms Lloyd. “It 
would set in motion something we as Americans can do in these tough times.”