When Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden on the White House lawn in 1943, she wasn’t simply growing vegetables—she was making a political statement. Her garden, like the estimated 20 million others that sprouted across American backyards, apartment rooftops, and public parks during World War II, represented a powerful confluence of patriotism, self-sufficiency, and collective action. These gardens produced approximately 40% of all vegetables consumed in the United States during the war years—a staggering 9-10 million tons of produce annually.
Today, as we face different but equally formidable challenges—climate change, food insecurity, corporate agricultural monopolies, and pandemic-related supply chain disruptions—the act of growing one’s own food has once again emerged as a form of political expression. This article examines the historical significance of Victory Gardens and explores how contemporary gardening movements continue this legacy of horticultural resistance.
The Political Roots of Victory Gardens
World War I: Patriotism Through Planting
The Victory Garden movement first took root during World War I, when the National War Garden Commission urged Americans to “sow the seeds of victory” by growing food at home. Charles Lathrop Pack, who headed the Commission, framed gardening as a patriotic duty: every tomato grown at home meant more food available to send overseas to allied troops and starving European civilians.
The numbers tell a compelling story: by 1918, more than 5.2 million war gardens were cultivated, producing food valued at over $520 million (equivalent to approximately $9 billion today). This massive citizen-led agricultural movement freed up commercial crops, reduced strain on railway transportation needed for war materials, and reduced food shortages in a time of global crisis.
World War II: The Garden Front
Victory Gardens reached their apex during World War II. When basic foodstuffs like sugar, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, coffee, meat, and canned goods were rationed, Victory Gardens provided essential nutritional supplements to the American diet. The government promoted these gardens through an extensive propaganda campaign that framed gardening as fighting on the “garden front.”
The Department of Agriculture distributed pamphlets with titles like “Victory Gardens for Freedom” and “Grow the Victory Garden Way.” Hollywood stars appeared in promotional films encouraging Americans to plant gardens. Walt Disney even created a propaganda film featuring characters from “The Victory Garden” tending their plots.
This was political gardening at an unprecedented scale:
- 20 million Victory Gardens were planted (approximately one-third of all households)
- These gardens produced 9-10 million tons of produce annually
- Victory Gardens accounted for roughly 40% of all vegetables consumed domestically
- In 1944, these gardens produced more fruits and vegetables than the entire commercial U.S. agricultural sector had in 1939
The framing was explicit: to garden was to fight fascism. To grow food was to support democracy. Every carrot pulled from American soil represented a blow against the Axis powers.
The Politicization of Contemporary Gardening
Food Sovereignty Movements
In the decades following World War II, industrialized agriculture, supermarket chains, and fast food corporations fundamentally transformed America’s relationship with food. The average American meal now travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate. Four companies control 80% of beef processing, and similar consolidation exists across the food supply chain.
Against this backdrop, contemporary gardening movements have emerged as acts of resistance against corporate food hegemony. Organizations like La Via Campesina, representing 200 million farmers worldwide, frame food sovereignty—the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through sustainable methods—as an explicitly political concept.
The numbers illustrate this growing movement:
- Community gardens in the U.S. have increased from fewer than 100 in 1970 to over 18,000 today
- 35% of American households now grow food at home or in community gardens
- Urban agriculture provides food for more than 700 million people globally—about one-quarter of the world’s urban population
Gardening as Environmental Activism
Climate change has added new political dimensions to gardening. Industrial agriculture accounts for approximately 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, localized food production can reduce the carbon footprint of food by up to 90% by eliminating transportation, refrigeration, and packaging.
The data shows significant environmental impacts of home and community gardens:
- A typical home garden produces 0.5 kg of food per square meter with water consumption 1/5th that of commercial agriculture
- Gardens sequester carbon at rates of approximately 4-8 kg of CO2 per square meter annually
- Home gardens preserve biodiversity, with the average home garden containing 25-100 distinct plant varieties compared to industrial monocultures
Every garden that composts, saves seeds, avoids pesticides, and grows heirloom varieties stands in opposition to environmentally destructive agricultural practices. These acts of cultivation become acts of political dissent against systems that prioritize profit over planetary health.
Food Justice and Urban Gardening
Perhaps nowhere is the political nature of contemporary gardening more evident than in the food justice movement, which addresses structural inequities in food access along racial and socioeconomic lines. In communities where the nearest grocery store may be miles away, but fast food restaurants and convenience stores abound, gardening becomes a tool for combating systemic inequality.
Organizations like Growing Power in Milwaukee, Truly Living Well in Atlanta, and the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network explicitly frame their work as resistance against food apartheid—a term that acknowledges the systemic, institutionalized, and historical policies that have created food deserts in predominantly Black and Brown communities.
The statistics highlight the scale of the problem and the impact of these gardening initiatives:
- 23.5 million Americans live in food deserts, with limited access to affordable, nutritious food
- Black Americans are 23.5% less likely to have access to supermarkets than white Americans
- Community gardens in low-income neighborhoods have been shown to increase property values within a 1,000-foot radius by as much as 9.4% over five years
- Participants in community garden programs consume fruits and vegetables 1.4 times more frequently than non-gardeners and are 3.5 times more likely to eat the recommended five daily servings
COVID-19: The Return of Victory Gardens
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a modern Victory Garden revival that echoed the wartime efforts of previous generations. As supply chains faltered and grocery store shelves emptied, Americans turned to gardening with renewed vigor:
- Seed sales increased by 300% in March-April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019
- 30% of gardeners were growing food for the first time
- Google searches for “how to grow vegetables” increased by 397% during the early pandemic
- 67% of first-time gardeners cited food security concerns as their primary motivation
Like their historical counterparts, these pandemic-era Victory Gardens represented a political response to crisis—an assertion of agency in the face of systemic vulnerability and a concrete step toward greater self-sufficiency and community resilience.
Gardens as Sites of Political Education and Community Organizing
Modern Victory Gardens serve as living classrooms where political consciousness can take root alongside vegetables. Community gardens often become hubs for organizing around related issues:
- 76% of community gardens offer educational programs about sustainable food systems
- 64% engage in advocacy related to food policy, land use, or environmental justice
- 82% distribute free or reduced-cost produce to community members in need
- 41% host cultural events celebrating food traditions of immigrant or Indigenous communities
These statistics demonstrate how contemporary gardens function as more than food production sites—they are incubators for political engagement and community solidarity.
Corporate Co-optation and Resistance
As with many grassroots movements, the political gardening movement faces challenges from corporate interests seeking to commodify and depoliticize growing food. The home gardening industry is now worth over $47.8 billion annually, with multinational corporations controlling much of the seed market, garden supplies, and messaging around gardening.
The tension between gardening as political resistance and gardening as consumer activity plays out in several ways:
- Three companies control 60% of the global commercial seed market
- The organic seed market has grown by 24% annually since 2015, with independents fighting to maintain market share
- 92% of heirloom seed companies explicitly frame their work in political terms of resistance against agricultural monopolies
- Patents on plants have increased by 1,200% since 1990, with over 250,000 plants now under intellectual property restrictions
Seed saving and trading networks have emerged as deliberate acts of resistance against corporate control of genetic resources. Organizations like the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Native Seeds/SEARCH, and Seed Savers Exchange preserve over 25,000 rare, threatened, or heirloom plant varieties. Their work represents a form of biocultural conservation that is inherently political in its opposition to the privatization of life.
The Future of Garden Politics
As climate change intensifies, economic inequality grows, and food system vulnerabilities become more apparent, gardening as political action will likely become more widespread and explicit. Several trends point to this future:
- Municipalities are increasingly incorporating urban agriculture into resilience planning, with 300+ major cities worldwide having formal urban agriculture policies
- Young farmers and gardeners show strong political motivations, with 74% of farmers under 40 citing environmental concerns as a primary reason for growing food
- Indigenous food sovereignty movements are reclaiming traditional agricultural practices, with over 400 tribal food sovereignty initiatives currently active in North America
- Community land trusts dedicated to preserving land for growing food have increased by 35% in the past decade
Conclusion: Cultivating Democracy
When we examine both historical Victory Gardens and their contemporary counterparts, a clear pattern emerges: gardening becomes most explicitly political during times of crisis when existing systems reveal their fragility or injustice. The simple act of pushing a seed into soil becomes a declaration—of independence from corporate food systems, of belief in collective action, of commitment to a more sustainable and equitable future.
The Victory Gardens of the World Wars helped nations weather acute crises through collective action. Today’s gardens address more chronic, structural problems—climate change, corporate consolidation, systemic inequality, and ecological destruction. Both represent the profound democratic principle that ordinary citizens can, through direct action and mutual aid, create systems that serve the common good.
As we face the complex challenges of the 21st century, the lessons of Victory Gardens—both historical and contemporary—remind us that some of our most potent political acts may be the quietest: the turning of soil, the saving of seeds, the sharing of harvest. These acts, multiplied across millions of gardens, represent a powerful vision of democracy rooted in the earth itself.