David Allison

During both World Wars, Victory Gardens became a way for citizens to show their solidarity and patriotism through growing their own vegetables and fruits. Canning and preserving the bounty of these gardens also became an outgrowth of this movement. Scholars estimate that around 40 percent of the vegetables grown in the United States during World War II came from Victory Gardens. 

Not only did Victory Gardens supplement food reserves, but they also provided a needed morale boost during a time of uncertainty, worry, and loss. The therapeutic nature of working outdoors to grow food for family and friends is clear, as gardens become an oasis of peace in an otherwise troubled world for millions of Americans. 

People throughout Colorado jumped onto the trend, as the Colorado State University extension office assisted Denver residents in creating over 50,000 Victory Gardens in the city during World War II.

Revival of the victory garden is a goal toward which we should aspire. Gardening is a feast for the senses—just imagine the rich smell of newly turned soil, the joyous sight of new pea plants poking their tendrils tentatively skyward, and the explosion of flavor in juicy, vine-ripe tomatoes. Avail yourself of the resources in the community—the CSU Extension Office here in Broomfield, the Butterfly Pavilion, Denver Botanic Gardens, and many, many others—to create your own Victory Garden during this similarly stressful time. 

I will leave you with a quote from C. Clair Culver, a biology teacher in Iowa, from 1942. He described how his class used their Victory Garden to experiment and to learn more about their world. His meticulous planning and detail are remarkable, and I hope that we might all learn from his industry, good humor, and ambition. Plus, anyone who is willing to use the term “animal excreta” in an article is ok in my book.

The desire of the students in my classes to grow plants for use in their victory gardens is largely responsible for introducing this experiment as a part of our laboratory work in our general course in Biology. We are growing cauliflower, tomato, pepper, salvia, aster and geranium plants for this purpose. Flats were made from scrap wood by the woodworking shop. These flats are twelve inches wide, twenty-four inches long and three inches deep with a crack of 3/16 inches between the boards on the bottom of the flat. The sieves were made from hardware cloth. The seedling soil was mixed as follows: 1/3 black loam, 1/3 sand, ⅓ peat. These were thoroughly mixed and screened through a Number 10 mesh sieve. The loam should be low in animal excreta as the presence of organic fertilizers often causes bacterial rots….

Also, check out these great posters for Victory Gardens from World War II! These are all from the Library of Congress and are free to use without copyright restrictions.

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Recently I was walking a section of the Broomfield Trail just east of 287 and south of the Broomfield Depot Museum. (You can check out a map of the extensive trail system in town at the link below.)

Map Front 2016

As you well know, it has been absolutely beautiful this week. It was cool in the morning, and the crisp cloudless sky was a rich blue. As I enjoyed being outside and strolling down the Trail, I couldn’t help but notice my surroundings. With apartment complexes on one side and industrial and retail buildings on the other, I felt like I was nestled in the heart of a modern, thriving suburb. But Broomfield has not always been such. 

The Arapahoe and Cheyenne people used this land for hunting and habitation, and more recently, farmers grew broomcorn and raised cattle and hogs. When I walk through unfamiliar places, like I was that day, I often look for evidence of what a place might have been like in the past. I try to visualize what that old barn looked like when it was freshly painted. Or I imagine what the rolling hills outside of Gettysburg might have felt like on that hot July day when two enormous armies clashed there in 1863. 

The past accretes over time, and we live our lives with pieces of the past constantly intruding themselves upon the present. What part of Broomfield’s past might I stumble on here along this Trail? At this section of the Trail, it follows along an old irrigation ditch—evidence that farmers had once tried to coax crops out of this arid land. The ditch is a fairly unremarkable, huge piece of evidence. But I also found this beautiful old fence post (see the picture below) with some rusty metal still clinging to it. Serendipitous moments like these, when the past comes alive through a tangible reminder that history is not dead, but is in fact with us all the time, are precious. The post stands alone on the edge of an apartment complex, a reminder that this place has not always been what it is now and will continue to change and evolve ever onward into the uncertain future.