Victory Gardens

There’s a new chapter in America’s victory garden story coming in 2012: Mrs. Obama’s book on the White House kitchen garden. Being as the pro-garden book is coming out in an election year–and the author’s husband is the incumbent president, expect a lot of buzz. And, given the charged political climate, maybe more than a little controversy? Then again, maybe we need to have a noisy national conversation about the health and vitality of our diets and communities.

The White House released a copy of the book’s cover in October 2011:

Yet even before the 2009 revival of the White House kitchen garden (sparked in part by a non-partisan, web-based national petition drive during the 2008 election), Americans have been interested in the intersection of food safety, security and nutrition that occurs in our veggie beds. RedWhiteandGrew.com has been at the forefront of the media’s examination and documentation of the victory garden story, past and present.

Whether you call yours a “kitchen garden,” a “recession garden, a “food garden” or the classic “victory garden,” the food grown in your yard, patio or community garden plot is part of a tradition–a low-key national dialogue–on independence and perseverance that dates back a couple of centuries when home veggie beds were called “liberty gardens.”

Today, some folks consider gardening to be a little subversive. Others just do it because their parents and grandparents did it. Or because they need an affordable way to provide fresh food for their families. Many people garden because they want their kids to understand the origins of the stuff on their plates.

We created our first “victory garden” back in 2008, just prior to the creation of this blog. It’s pictured above in early 2011, just before a nasty drought set in here in Central Texas. The major impetus? We wanted to teach our kid a basic life skill. Around the same time that we created the garden, I launched this blog.

Although the focus of RW&G has changed to include much more than “just” victory gardening, I’m still enthusiastic about the current victory garden revival. This third incarnation of victory gardening has its roots in the recession and the rise of social media, which has helped spur its growth. Incidentally, the phrase “victory garden” will celebrate a century of popularity stateside in 2019. (The phrase dates back to 17th century England.)

If the topic of “victory gardening” is what brought you here to RedWhiteandGrew.com today, then here are some useful RW&G-related pages for you to explore (below). You might also want to check out some of the links and the video over on The Buzz. (See especially this smashing write-up of how my blog came to be by the San Antonio Current‘s Greg Harman, an incredible environmental writer.)

My friends at Horticulture Magazine created this graphic for this 2009 article.

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Page last updated 23 October 2011