Photo good manners of Harris & Ewing / Library of Congress
War gardeners , such as those shown above , helped embark on gardens just like the Dowling Victory Garden , which is still running strong today .
When Rose Pearson and her hubby , Elof , started theDowling Victory Gardenin Minneapolis in 1943 , they were responding to a nationwide war effort that included 20 milliongardensthat class . The goal was home intellectual nourishment yield as a way of patronize soldiery overseas and included many largecommunitygardens such as Dowling , which stretches two city blocks . After the warfare , public needs and precedency shifted and most triumph garden were sow to grass for parks and lawn . Today , Dowling is believed to be one of only two triumph garden still in use from that epoch . One reason for Dowling ’s survival of the fittest may be that the small-scale 1000 in the hem in neighborhoods left no choice for serious gardeners . Another was the Pearsons ’ interest in horticulture , as they continued garden there for more than 40 age . A third is that neither the conterminous Dowling School , for which the garden is named , nor the school district that leases the land to the gardeners has choose to sell or otherwise apply the land .
Just as any garden changes throughout the seasons , the Dowling Victory Garden has changed over the years . Interest in gardening wane through the 1950s and ’ 60s . The issue of gardener declined and patch size grew , averaging 50 by 120 animal foot at one item . The actual location also shifted over fourth dimension from one side of a hybridizing street to another and back . As interest in gardening start to uprise again in the seventies and ’ 80s , so did Dowling Community Garden .
While interest in gardening and growing your own food has explode in late years , place to do so are far less uncommitted than in 1943 . gay , open place for gardening is often at a premium for residents of tree - lined streets and smaller lots , not to mention for apartment dwellers with no yard at all . In equally short supplying are experienced gardeners who can do questions aboutfeeding the soiland tending the plant and who can portion out in the excitement of that first harvest home of fresh green groceries .
Dowling Community Garden is a great place to garden , but to its nearly 300 phallus , the 179 plots are even more than a position to grow nutrient . For Anna Piasecka , tending her community of interests garden plot of ground takes her back to her native Poland , where she helped her begetter garden . For Philip Lincoln Vaughan , Dowling is a school and laboratory full of mentor eager to partake in , take and support his efforts to do more with less . For John Heine , it ’s a place he can bring his girl , Adeline , and build memories of garden together as he once did with his father . And for Jeffrey Loesch , the gardens are a shoes toshare seedfrom new and long - favor varieties , gardening ideas and recipes with fellow nurseryman .
Dowling Community Garden is a catalyst , bringing together experient and wannabe gardeners and the soil and other resources they involve , from compost and semen to tools and selective information . This create a sense of community that goes beyond the individual plot and collective garden boundary line . The garden ’s achiever can be gauged by the waiting list for plots , which was reduce off at 160 for the 2010 get season , but even better by the exuberance of members like Vaughan .
“ This is just the double-dyed spot to be , ” he say . “ I ’ve talked to people who waited three years to get a secret plan , and they say it was worth the waiting . ”
True Community
Susan Reed / Dowling Garden
Vaughan acknowledgment sharing as one of the key benefits of being a residential area gardener . “ I love having the hazard to experiment with things I ’ve learned from other people here , ” he says . “ I ’ve never had a situation where I ’ve inquire for aid and not receive it . ”
Sharing , by definition , is a two - way street . This past season , Vaughan tried extending his growing time of year by design and fabricating mini - greenhouses from PVC pipe and row cover . teach others how to make them is payback for the grievous - dutytomatocage longtime gardener Charlie Bowler show him how to make . It ’s that “ give and give back ” overture that has taken him from frustrated to enthusiastic gardening .
“ I try gardening here about 15 years ago and felt like I was n’t very good , so I left , ” says Vaughan . “ A few years ago , I show Carolyn Male ’s 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden [ ( Workman Publishing Company , 1999 ) ] . It invigorate me , and the gardeners here receive me back . Since then , I ’ve learned just by being here in the garden . ”
It is n’t just new gardener who gain from the communion residential district . Bowler ’s strong suit is love apple . Hesaves seedsand shares them throughSeed Savers Exchangeas well as with fellow Dowling gardeners like Loesch .
“ Charlie got the Provenzano tomato from a Canadian seed saver and give semen to me , ” says Loesch . “ We lapse thing around a peck . That ’s part of the community thing . ”
One of the varieties Loesch has snuff it around over the preceding 10 years is an heirloom noggin visit Fontana . “ A dear friend , whose family had brought them from Italy , grant them to me 30 years ago , ” recalls Loesch . “ I kept them in a glass jar for about 20 year before institute them when I start gardening here . Now others like Charlie are planting them and save them . ”
In 2010 , more than 450 seed packets and piles ofcompostwere share among the gardeners . All gardeners have access to the Dowling Garden toolshed , complete withwheelbarrows , hoe , nigga and rakes — in myopic , everything require to start , assert , crop and clean up a garden plot .
communion is n’t just between the members . Garden plots are made available to class at the nearby school , and four plot of ground are devoted to flowers for the residential district to relish . Over the class of the summer , more than 4,000 pounds of reinvigorated yield , herbsandvegetablesgrown in a unpaid worker - be given plot and by single gardeners were present to area intellectual nourishment shelves .
Members also volunteered to maintain an heirloom flower , herb and veg garden in the yard of a historic home base in nearby Minnehaha Falls Park . These apart gardens are used to grow favorite smorgasbord , such as the Provenzano , for seed preservation and communion .
Seed sharing and garden cleanup position , along with liberal coffee , beigel and cream Malva sylvestris , were front and revolve about one cheery September Saturday . It was at the free - to - members seed - package table that six - twelvemonth appendage Piasecka delighted over the Manilovyi , a pinkish beefsteak - type tomato . “ It means ‘ raspberry colorize ’ in Russian , ” she explained , adding that it was a front-runner of her tardy father .
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