City Bountiful

About this book

Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardens--each representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. Her narrative focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs. [from publisher description].