The History of Victory Gardens

<h4>The History of Victory Gardens (Guest Post)</h4>
<p>Thanks to the efforts of community gardeners, locavores, and the First Lady, the victory garden has made a comeback in recent years. And it’s not just the province of hippies and hipsters — many neighborhoods in the inner cities of the United States have fully embraced the community garden model as a way to reduce crime and delinquency, bring up property values, and offset grocery costs. What many people don’t quite realize is that this current upsurge in garden enthusiasm has a precedent: the mass victory garden movement that began in World War I and really took off with World War II.</p>
<p>In 1917, a group of American politicians, intellectuals, conservationists, and social welfare activists formed the National War Garden Commission as a reaction to World War I’s detrimental effect on the food supply. Thanks to the collapse of intra-European trade relations, nations that had previously imported foo...