Victory Garden Series
Washington, DC Public School children preparing the soil for their community Victory Garden under supervision of one of their teachers, 1943, Courtesy of Library of Congress
Today launch a Victory Garden Series. One of the most successful New Deal and World War II policies had been the creation of relief and victory gardens in order for the country to have a decent amount of food. At the time majority of food production went overseas to feed US troops. Families and neighbors would get together for a good workout at the community Victory Garden as part of the war effort. "Through cooperation of local organizations, thousands of vacant lots in thousands of cities were transformed into fruitful gardens where everyone puts in hours of “patriotic labor,”"reads a caption for a victory garden image in the Library of Congress collection. My father Fred Opie Jr. had been a child during the war in North Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow, New York. He recalls “back then there was a lot of open space, land just lying dormant that wasn’t being used.” He says, “a lot of people had victory gardens.”
