magazine, as saying: “It’s not like we’re upset that they’re planting seeds, but there’s got to be a line. Otherwise, everyone and their uncle would be there growing things.”
Now that’s a scary thought. And also a thought blind to historical precedence. Everyone and their uncle did in fact grow things—lots of things in lots of places, including on the legislature grounds—during at least three notable periods in North American history: during World War I, the Depression, and World War II. Variously labeled as war gardens, relief gardens, and Victory Gardens, these massive efforts at domestic, home-based food production were hugely successful by any measure. Fruit and vegetable gardens sprang up everywhere there was space: in backyards and front yards, parks, utility corridors, vacant lots, school grounds, church grounds, playing fields, community centers, corporate grounds, railway corridors . . . Name a type of private or public space and it was planted. Likewise, the commitment to food production cut across all social classes, from the poorest to the richest, from the powerful to the disenfranchised. Picture this: millionaire socialite Helena Rubinstein had a penthouse Victory Garden (she called it her “Farm in the Sky”) at her Park Avenue apartment in New York City. Along with growing cauliflower, cabbage, and celery, she kept two chickens and two rabbits. At a 1943 Victory Garden party she hosted in honor of the United States Crop Corps, an organization of auxiliary farm workers recruited by the War Manpower Commission to grow food, surrealist painter Salvador Dali mingled with the assembled crowd.
The North American public enthusiastically embraced domestic food production during both world wars, proving that a staggering amount of food could be grown, particularly in cities, if people set their minds to it. During World War I, an estimated 5 million gardeners in America produced $520 million worth of food in 1918, cultivated in backyards, vacant lots, and previously untilled land; the National War Garden Commission in the U.S. (just the fact that such a commission existed speaks volumes) called them “patriotic gifts . . . to the nation.”
What is perhaps most striking—particularly for today’s audience— is the earnest urgency of the government’s language around the need for domestic food production. During WWI, the Ontario Department of Agriculture steeped its garden promotion in military metaphors intended to galvanize the populace. “Have You Enlisted in The Greater Production Battalion?” asked a full-page advertisement the department published in the April 1918 edition of The Canadian Horticulturist. Likewise, a department circular, titled “A Vegetable Garden for Every Home,” stated that “every backyard is fighting ground for the empire.” Noting that the government planned to ban the sale of canned goods (in order to preserve supplies for the war effort), the department warned that “if we don’t grow them [vegetables], we won’t have them.” Rarely does a government entity summarize a situation with such bracing clarity.
Nor did the end of the hostilities in Europe bring an end to North American food production campaigns. In 1919, the National War Garden Commission stated, “As a result of emergency created by war the home garden of America has become an institution of world-wide importance.” Characterizing home food gardens as that “which helped establish the balance of power between starvation and abundance,” the commission urged Americans to engage in “high pressure food production.”
North Americans responded to the call again during World War II. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 20 million Victory Gardens produced 40 percent of America’s fresh vegetables in 1943. In Canada, according to the federal Department of Agriculture, 115 million pounds of vegetables were grown in 209,200 urban gardens in that same year. There were, of course, thousands more wartime gardens in villages and on farms.
Such commitment to the food-growing effort didn’t just spontaneously spring forth from the collective consciousness of the North American urban populace. It arose in response to policies and promotional campaigns that worked to organize public purpose. At all levels of government, in both the U.S. and Canada, officials drove home the message—often couched in patriotic terms—that gardens were a matter of “duty.”
For example, the federal government appealed to Canadians during WWII with the following bold and baldly stated goal: “Every available bit of land that is suitable should be put into a garden. Those with experience should help their neighbours who wish to start.” The feds advised provincial governments that it was “desirable to sponsor community garden and backyard garden campaigns.” Cities across Canada took up the charge. Victoria, British Columbia, offered concessions to the public at $5 a year to grow gardens on vacant lots. Toronto, Ontario, offered the use of municipally owned lots to individuals and groups for gardening purposes, charging just 25 cents for a permit; interestingly, the fee covered police protection for the gardens. Even Toronto’s mayor got in the act, arranging a photo op with the Globe and Mail, which dutifully reported that Mayor Fred Conboy’s flower border was replaced with tomatoes and that his lawn was being transformed into a potato patch.
Citizens responded with all-out effort. The police and firemen at the Forest Hill Village station in Toronto cut four patches out of their 5,000-square-foot lawn. As the Globe described it in June 1943, they used “any odd time they [could] spare from upholding the law and keeping firefighting equipment in tip-top condition” to grow tomatoes, radishes, Scotch kale, carrots, cabbages, and more.
The Ontario Hydro Horticultural Club’s Victory Garden Committee had 425 members in Toronto alone (750 throughout the province) gardening on land donated by municipal commissions and private owners. In Toronto, they grew $26,000 (or $331,000 in 2009 dollars) worth of food in 1943. The Community Gardens Association of Toronto tended plots on major streets, cultivating $30,940 worth of vegetables. The Pine Crescent Joy Club, an east-end Toronto activity club for youngsters, turned the lawn, where once they enjoyed badminton, horseshoes, and lawn bowling, into a 35-foot-long, V-shaped Victory Garden. Seed companies did a roaring business: in response to a reporter’s inquiries, one seed seller responded, “We’re so busy selling seeds for Victory gardens that we have no time to even discuss them.”
All this food-focused labor bore results across the country. By the end of the 1943 growing season, there were approximately 52,000 Victory Gardens in the greater Vancouver area, which together produced 31,000 tons of fruits and vegetables valued at $4 million. Many Vancouverites also applied to the City Building and Zoning Secretary for permission to keep more than twelve chickens (permits weren’t required for fewer than twelve), though this pales in comparison to the livestock action in Britain, where, according to Michael Hough’s book Cities and Natural Process (first published in 1984 as City Form and Natural Process), keeping chickens, pigs, goats and bees “evolved as a major urban activity” during the war: “By 1943 there were 4,000 pig clubs comprising some 110,000 members keeping 105,000 pigs.”
The British effort no doubt provided inspiration for many North American Victory Garden campaigns. Images of British citizens growing food in craters left by bombs and using the Tower of London moat to grow cabbages were surely potent motivation for North Americans to assist in the war effort by growing food anywhere and everywhere. Even the royal family was tending vegetable gardens at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
Although it might seem inappropriate to make the connection, there are striking parallels between then and now. Global conflict threatened and continues to threaten our ability to take care of our most basic needs. For us in North America, the threat may not be as immediate, but it hovers in the background because our society is now far more global. We are more connected to, and dependent upon, other parts of the world than ever before. Today, as a result of many factors, including the recession, close to 4 million Americans and 3.4 million Canadians live in poverty and struggle to feed themselves adequately, relying on food banks, food stamps, and charitable organizations to supplement their diet. Although the particular circumstances of past world wars, the Depression, and the current climate are vastly different, there remains a common thread: millions of North Americans are in need, and one of the basic things they need is food. In this context, are the times not ripe to nurture the resilience—resilience that sprang,
