Rebecca Onion: The motivations of people who are starting coronavirus “victory gardens” this spring seem to center on anxiety: Will there be enough food? And will I—or my family or community—have access to it? Was that why people started “victory gardens” during the world wars, or was it patriotism, or something else?
Anastasia Day: The motivations were actually pretty similar to many of the sentiments driving people today. There was a lot of anxiety in the air—not just anxiety about food supply and availability, but also anxiety about a larger crisis. Just like in World War II, I think a lot of everyday Americans are feeling a little powerless to affect what happens with a huge global problem. Gardening is a really concrete way that people can feel empowered—at least within their own lives.
What we are seeing happen this spring is remarkable. I have a Google Alert set up for mentions of victory gardens, and I normally get one to two mentions a week, often obituaries saying, “They grew a victory garden during World War II.” Lately I’ve been getting 15 or 20 every two or three days—mentions in blog posts and local newspapers, even the New York Times.
I think what this represents is distinctly different from World War II, in that [WWII] victory gardening was a very top-down enterprise. I’ve found, in my research, just a tremendous amount of money, effort, and advertising dollars, from both private and federal, state, and local government sources, fueling the victory garden program in WWII. Free pamphlets, free seed packets, subsidized plowing, community gardens. … Today, this seems to be very much a grassroots instinct and impulse we are seeing.
And now, we are getting access to information and supplies through the market, not through the government.
Absolutely.
You linked a WWII-era educational film about victory gardening in a blog post of yours. I watched it, and it was surprising on so many levels. One of the things that was so striking about it was that these people—it’s a family they follow—are planting a whole bunch of land. It’s a quarter acre, which doesn’t sound that big, but in the film, boy, it looks like so much work. How much work were people doing on these, during the war? How big were these plots?
Yes! There were absolutely mind-boggling recommendations, especially the one from the U.S. Extension Service for rural areas, suggesting planting something close to a quarter acre of land of vegetables for every member of your family. Ludicrous ideas like that. What’s even crazier is that lots of 4-H children single-handedly farmed one or two plots—you see this when you look at 4-H records from during the war.