Gardeners in Arms

Urban planters in a WW2 victory garden show how community gardens help fight climate change

District citizens prepare the soil for the Cleveland Park victory garden in northwest, May 1943. Credit: Louise Rosskam/FSA. Courtesy Library of Congress

For years, the big, acre-sized garden I’ve walked past in our neighborhood has called to me. You can see the community garden from the woodsy park next to it, and from the four lanes of Connecticut Avenue. Walking by, I’ve eyeballed a few people at a time inside the fence, quietly focused as they fiddle with watering cans and digging tools. Late last fall, the space felt bigger, crawling with overgrown vines, reddening tomatoes, gourds, and sunflower stalks climbing up to 12 feet high. Finally I was curious enough to start asking questions.

Turns out, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the community garden at Cleveland Park. It started as a Victory Garden in another time of unpredictable supply chains when lethal threats from America’s enemies prompted people to grow vegetables for self-sufficiency.

It’s tempting to view World War II as a time of unified purpose, but the city’s wartime council was acting fractious one night in January 1943. Saddled with bureaucracy, rattled by air-raid sirens that went off at random times, the council teetered on coming apart. “We’re just not going to take it anymore,” one member told the Washington Post. But one program the council agreed on was Victory Gardens. Irrigation pumps were ordered and a dozen gardens laid out across the…