CHAPTER IV 



TYPES OF WAR GARDENS 



How Different People Planned to Plant and Win the War 



ON plaster and ash-filled ground only a few feet 

 above the rumbling subway in New York City 

 was a war garden. From this little vegetable 

 plot in Bryant Park, where land is valued at some- 

 thing like ^20,000 a square foot, to the tiny garden 

 along the railroad right of w^ay near the tops of the 

 White Mountains, is a far, far cry. Yet both spots had 

 their war gardens. The one in Bryant Park was a 

 demonstration garden, started solely for educational 

 purposes. Here representatives of the National War 

 Garden Commission preached the gospel of gardening 

 and freely gave helpful advice and garden primers to 

 passing inquirers. On the other hand the tiny garden 

 on the cloud-capped slope of the White Mountains was 

 wholly utilitarian. A patriotic hand had planted it, 

 and loving fingers tended it, in the hope that it would 

 bring forth, perhaps, a few dollars' worth of food; in 

 the belief that its product would lessen, though ever 

 so little, the pressure on our commercial food supplies, 

 from which alone our allies could draw sustenance. 



The same spirit of helpfulness, of readiness to "do 

 one's bit" animated countless other Americans. So 

 the war garden was found in tiny clearings beside the 



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