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Fenway Victory Gardens

Oldest Surviving Victory Garden in the United States

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By Mary Schons

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Fenway Victory Gardens in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest surviving victory garden in the United States. The Fenway gardens were established in 1942, at the urging of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Victory gardens were planted on private and public land in the U.S. during World War I and World War II to reduce pressure on the nation’s food supply during wartime. Victory gardens were sometimes called “war gardens” or “food gardens for defense.”

Fenway Victory Gardens is an enormous space, with seven acres in the heart of Boston's Fenway neighborhood. The site is part of Back Bay Fens, the first park in Boston's famous “Emerald Necklace” system of parks and waterways.

Back Bay Fens gets its name from the primary ecosystem of the area. A fen is a wetland fed by groundwater and drainage from surrounding soils. Because fens are fed by freshwater sources, they are not as acidic as bogs and can support a wide array of plant and animal life.

Back Bay Fens

Back Bay Fens was officially established in 1879. By then, Boston's groundwater had become polluted. The city's growing population and a nearby mill had turned the fens into an open sewer.

The city demanded a solution to this stinky problem, and officials turned to Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted had been a chief executive of the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, but is most well-known as the father of landscape architecture.

During his lifetime, Olmstead designed dozens of parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park, both in New York City. He also designed the grounds and terraces of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and planned the site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Olmsted believed that parks should be for the enjoyment of all city residents to relax and enjoy nature, free from the stress of urban life.

For Back Bay Fens, Olmsted turned the tidal pool into a creek (the Muddy River) that wound through the fen, adding native plants that thrived in brackish water. The creek was designed to be flushed out with the tides twice a day. The garden wetland helped mitigate flooding in the area. In 1910, a dam was placed on the Charles River, turning the brackish water into a freshwater environment.

Fenway Victory Gardens

In 1942, President Roosevelt urged Americans to grow fruits and vegetables to supplement the food supply during World War II. In response, the city of Boston and the Boston Victory Garden Committee secured 49 areas around the city to be used to grow food. The area around Back Bay Fens was ideal for planting because it was not wooded and needed little preparation before planting. Boston Common and the Public Garden were also used to supplement the U.S. supply of fresh food.

Victory gardens were seen as essential because while the total output of food had increased, a smaller share was going to civilians. Mandatory food rationing was a part of life during the war. Victory gardens made it possible for farmers to send more of their food overseas to feed U.S. troops.

By 1943, 20 million households produced more than 40 percent of the vegetables that were eaten stateside, and more than 4 billion jars of food were preserved either in home kitchens or community canning centers.

After World War II, federal funding for community victory gardens ended, and Boston’s priorities changed. The city was less worried about growing enough vegetables to feed the city and more concerned with city growth in the heart of Boston. The pressure to tear down the gardens was very strong.

There were three major proposals to develop the Fenway Victory Gardens site. One proposal called for constructing a school on the spot, another called for a hospital. Other developers considered bulldozing the gardens to make a parking lot.

Richard D. Parker, a member of the original victory garden committee during World War II, organized the Fenway community to save the gardens from development. Parker helped create the Fenway Garden Society in 1944 and continued to garden in the Fenway until his death in 1975. In 1979, the gardens were renamed the Richard D. Parker Memorial Victory Gardens in his honor.

Fenway Gardens Today

Today, Fenway Victory Gardens is divided into 500 fenced plots. A gardener must be a Boston resident in order to have a victory garden plot.

"It used to be whoever showed up got a space," said Mike Mennonno, current president of the Fenway Garden Society. "But the neighborhood is currently experiencing a renaissance. There's a wait-list now. A gardener must first volunteer and do community service with the Fenway Garden Society before they receive a victory garden plot."

About 25 percent of the plots grow vegetables. There are leisure gardens, flower, fruit, and herb gardens, and perennial gardens.

"We're trying to even out this ratio now," said Mennonno. "The Fenway Victory Gardens contain a series of microclimates that makes growing vegetables in all the plots difficult. The wet areas are near the Muddy River, while the areas near Boylston Street and Park Drive are higher up and are a little drier."

For the gardeners who grow vegetables, popular crops are tomatoes and salad greens, such as kale, lettuce, and arugula.

"Some gardeners practice vertical gardening, which is used to grow gourds," said Mennonno.

The vegetables attract wildlife to the park.

"Squirrels in particular love cucumbers and zucchini," said Mennonno.

In 1999, the Victory Gardens established an ADA-accessible garden, following guidelines established by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). This garden was completely redesigned in 2011. The Fenway Garden Society partners with the Greater Boston Food Bank to deliver surplus food to area soup kitchens. A teaching garden with 17 raised vegetable beds offers workshops for a wide variety of urban gardeners, as well as new members of the society.

"What makes the gardens so interesting is that we have such a large community of gardeners all over Boston," said Mennonno. "We have a little village dedicated to this type of activity. There are federally protected lands all around us, but they and the parks don’t just happen and they don’t just continue to happen. To maintain the gardens also means maintaining the community that maintains the park and the garden."

During World War II, government and industry supported community gardening as patriotic.

Photograph courtesy the National Archives

Dear Mother
The average number of flowers snatched from Fenway Victory Gardens in the weeks preceding Mother's Day (the year's worst flower-theft period): 650
Read All About It!
Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Here are books about gardening—the best of both worlds!

The Victory Garden, by Lee Kochenderder. Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2002.
World War II for Kids: A History with 21 Activities, by Richard Panchyk. Chicago Review Press, 2002. (Tips on how to grow your own victory garden are on page 52.)

Vocabulary

Term	Part of Speech	Definition
ratio	noun	relationship between numbers or numerical values.
ration	verb	to supply people with a fixed amount of food or another good or service.
bog	noun	wetland of soft ground made mostly of decaying plant matter.
brackish water	noun	salty water, usually a mixture of seawater and freshwater.
city	noun	large settlement with a high population density.
Civil War	noun	(1860-1865) American conflict between the Union (north) and Confederacy (south).
civilian	noun	person who is not in the military.
creek	noun	flowing body of water that is smaller than a river.
crop	noun	agricultural produce.
dam	noun	structure built across a river or other waterway to control the flow of water.
development	noun	construction or preparation of land for housing, industry, or agriculture.
ecosystem	noun	community and interactions of living and nonliving things in an area.
enormous	adjective	very large.
essential	adjective	needed.
establish	verb	to form or officially organize.
federal	adjective	having to do with a country's government.
fen	noun	type of wetland or bog, usually less acidic than a true bog.
food	noun	material, usually of plant or animal origin, that living organisms use to obtain nutrients.
Franklin Roosevelt	noun	(1882-1945) 32nd president of the United States.
freshwater	noun	water that is not salty.
groundwater	noun	water found in an aquifer.
landscape architect	noun	person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of open spaces such as gardens.
mandatory	adjective	required.
microclimate	noun	small area where the climate differs within a larger climate region, such as "heat islands" in a city.
mitigate	verb	to lower the severity of a natural or human condition.
neighborhood	noun	an area within a larger city or town where people live and interact with one another.
pollute	verb	to introduce harmful materials into a natural environment.
population	noun	total number of people or organisms in a particular area.
primary	adjective	first or most important.
acid	noun	chemical compound that reacts with a base to form a salt. Acids can corrode some natural materials. Acids have pH levels lower than 7.
array	noun	large group.
sanitary	adjective	clean or hygienic.
sewer	noun	passageway or holding tank for liquid waste.
soil	noun	top layer of the Earth's surface where plants can grow.
supplement	verb	to increase or add to.
surplus	noun	more than what is needed or wanted.
terrace	noun	flat surface created on a steep hillside for the purposes of agriculture.
thrive	verb	to develop and be successful.
troop	noun	a soldier.
urban	adjective	having to do with city life.
village	noun	small human settlement usually found in a rural setting.
wetland	noun	area of land covered by shallow water or saturated by water.
World War I	noun	(1914-1918) armed conflict between the Allies (led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and the Central Powers (led by Germany and Austria-Hungary). Also called the Great War.
World War II	noun	(1939-1945) armed conflict between the Allies (represented by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) and the Axis (represented by Germany, Italy, and Japan.)
tide	noun	rise and fall of the ocean's waters, caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)	noun	(1990) law requiring "equal opportunity for persons with disabilities, in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation, and requiring the establishment of TDD/telephone relay services."
Emerald Necklace	noun	system of parks and waterways in Boston, Massachusetts.
Frederick Law Olmsted	noun	(1822-1903) American landscape architect.
vertical gardening	noun	process of growing plants on a vertical structure, such as a wire cage or wall.
victory garden	noun	public or private vegetable garden grown to increase food production during wartime. Also called war garden or defense garden.
soup kitchen	noun	public or private facility where meals, usually soup, are provided at little or no cost to those in need.
wooded	adjective	densely covered with trees or shrubs.