Figure 1.--Here we see a school garden in the 1910s. We think iy is part of the U.S. School Garden Army. Without the government program, school gardens were not very practical becaise the growing season was durung the summer vacation. The USSGA program organized the children and teachers to garden during their summer vacation. Some 6 million children paricipated.

Another American food related effort was the U.S School Garden Army (USSGA). It was lauched to promote gardening among school children when the United States entered World War I (1917). At the time there was no Department of Education. There was the small Bureau of Education (BOE) within the Department of the Interior. The BOE obtained funding from the War Department for a nation-wide school gardening program--the USSGA. The idea was that encourging school children to garden could help increase local food production and helped to prevent prevent shortages as well as boosting morale on the home front. President Wilson personally promoted the effort, writing "� every boy and girl who really sees what the home garden may mean will, I am sure, enter into the purpose with high spirits � the movement to establish gardens � and to have children work in them is just as real and patriotic an effort as the building of ships or the firing of cannon.� There was concern ovr a possible food crisis. Producing nore food locally could help prevent this as well as release more of the existing production for the war effort. The War Deparment was willing to fund the USSGA as food was now an issue of national security. American kids were up to the challenge. Several million children proudly enlisting as 'Soldiers of the Soil'. One source estimates that some 6 million school children were involved. [Findlay] Schools all over the country got into the business of growing vegetables. The motto of the USCGA was, "A garden for every child, every child in a garden." We are unsure how much food was actully producd. The decentrakized nature of the effort ment that data was difficult to collect. It was also an early step in Federal involvement with education, a state and local probince. It was one of the first BOE attempts to create a national curriculumy. To support the program, the BOE produced a series of documents and destributed them to the schools. There were manuals and guides for the schools as well as circulars aimed at home gardening. The target audience was urban and suburban children ages 9 through 15 years old and their teachers. Hom gardening was still very commonn in rural areas. The subjects covered growing vegetables from seed, growing flowers, building hotbeds and coldframes, organic matter and soil health, regional guides and others.

Sources

Findlay, Hugh. "The School Garden Army 6,000,000 strong, Independent), v. 94 (May 4, 1918), p. 211.

Created: 6:02 PM 2/24/2018
Last updated: 6:02 PM 2/24/2018