CHAPTER IV 
TYPES OF WAR GARDENS 
How Different People Planned to Plant and Win the War 
O N 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 way 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 WTite 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 5 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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