In the first wave of organized garden projects, social reformers and state institutions used gardening projects to support urban working populations in order to help maintain social cohesion, optimism, a good work ethic, and sustenance during an extended period of economic decline . During the economic depression of 1893-1897, Detroit Mayor Hazen Pingree initiated the Potato-Patch Farms, the first of the vacant-lot cultivation programs in the US . When unemployment rose in 1893, charity organizations were unable to meet the needs of out-of-work daylaborers, Polish immigrants, and others impacted by the depression . The mayor optimistically believed that in a city with over 6,000 acres of vacant land, landowners would happily loan their land for gardening. The idea was received with reservation from Detroit’s wealthy communities and it took the mayor’s personal financial investment to get the initiative off the ground. After selling his prize horse, the mayor started the program with 455 donated acres of vacant land for cultivation to provide food, economic support, opportunities for self-appreciation and promote assimilation of immigrants . By 1889 the idea had spread to nineteen cites across the US. Depending on the city, vacant-lot cultivation associations were developed by charitable organizations, municipal agencies, or committees of private citizens with the common aims of providing land and technical assistance to unemployed laborers as emergency relief measures . Yet the gardens were never intended to be permanent, unlike similar programs in Western Europe.

For example,vertical farm tower the English allotment system was originally developed out of resistance to the enclosures on communal land and the search for space for gardening to supplement the inadequate diets of recent landless city dwellers . In 1845, British law mandated garden allotments to be allocated to laborers as a means to provide long-term support to fully employed, yet low waged workers . In contrast, in the US vacant-lot cultivation associations only sought temporary use of vacant land. Associations frequently included wealthy landowners and politicians who used the associations as a means to gain support and other benefits . Landowners were attracted with promises that the associations would organize volunteers to clear and clean the vacant land and that gardeners would promptly vacate the land should the landlord desire to sell or otherwise use the property. In Philadelphia land was loaned with the agreement that it would be returned within ten days of the owner’s request . Obtaining and maintaining access to land was one of the most difficult tasks US associations managed. Several cities including New York and Philadelphia conducted vacant land inventories to identify potential garden locations . But associations found it difficult to persuade landowners to donate land that had high speculative value. Associations were also uninterested in small plots of land distributed throughout the city due to the increased costs and labor of supervising many locations. Most frequently associations would develop farms on large tracts of land on the city outskirts, where land was divided into individual family plots ranging from one-eighth-acre to one acre in size. The distant location of garden plots from most gardeners meant transportation costs were high. As economies improved across the country, landowners took back their parcels and vacant-lot cultivation associations disappeared by the later 1890s.

The one exception was the Philadelphia Vacant Lot Cultivation Association, which persisted until 1927. A Philadelphia garden supervisor noted that gardeners felt little motivation to put significant time and energy into their plots knowing most pieces of land were on loan for only three to five years . While in some cities, such as Detroit, garden organizers proposed to buy land for permanent urban garden cultivation and poor relief, no such sites were developed. Landowners pushed back against even temporary loans of land fearing that a charity today would become a demand for land “as a matter of right” tomorrow . Some associations avoided this fear and lack of tenure security by renting vacant land or using public land. But by far the most common model of land access during this period was through borrowing lands temporarily. In both Detroit and Buffalo, the two cities with the largest gardening programs of the depression of the 1890s, city officials and charity workers embraced gardening as a temporary use of city land; yet they ultimately understood that this land was to be used for its “highest and best use”, i.e. real estate which necessitated housing density for higher landlord profits . In Chicago and in Boston garden advocates sought the use of public parkland for gardening only to be turned down. Although there was debate, parks designers focused on building recreational facilities for sports and green open space, not including gardening in newly forming parks . Around 1901, school gardening became a popular avenue to promote agrarian ethics, entrepreneurial skills and work ethic, and provided opportunities for developing connections to nature. Although gardens were frequently initiated through the work of women’s clubs, mother’s associations, and horticultural clubs, school garden advocates advanced the position that gardens should hold a permanent place in public education. University extension offices became advocates for urban gardening as an integral piece of public schooling.

The University of California developed a project entitled the Garden City, which promoted agrarian ideals through gardening and agricultural activities for a wide age range of students. By 1911, over 200 students were allocated plots in a one-acre site on the UC Berkeley campus, where they worked individually to produce and sell vegetables and flowers . Communal plots were used to demonstrate agricultural technologies and best practices, as well as to do team building activities. This combination of individual and communal gardening became a common strategy used across the nation to both encourage individual ownership and work ethic while engaging students in collective learning . University students were sent throughout the state to replicate the extension service’s model by establishing clubs and Garden Cities. Not all school gardens operated on plots of land on school property, unlike many school gardens today. Many garden programs focused on teaching school children skills they were expected to use in backyard home gardens . Some schools developed model demonstration gardens at or near schools where gardening lessons could be taught. Home gardens were used to cultivate children’s sense of ownership and pride in their homes, frequently predicated on valuing private property,vertical plant tower while also teaching children how to reduce household expenses on food. Teachers visited student homes and interacted with parents, which was a common strategy of turn of the century social reform charities interested in improving the moral and physical health of youth at home . Alternatively, many school garden advocates who wanted to see lasting garden programs promoted on campus gardening. This was partially motivated by the knowledge that gardens integrated into school functioning and located on school property did not face the same tenure insecurity of gardens offsite . School gardens were used to promote a sense of personal responsibility for public property. When land was not available at school sites, the federal Office of School and Home Gardening, which operated from 1914 to 1920, suggested teachers locate vacant land nearby that could be loaned or rented, use rooftops where available, or develop window boxes. These strategies were promoted in the industrial east coast cities. In New York, the school system partnered with city parks to develop seven school gardens in four city parks . Parks administrators saw the benefit of school children gaining access to land, and their presence was seen as a way to reduce the “lawlessness and vandalism” common in city parks . Thus, what was initially seen as an educational enterprise began to cull support from urban planning offices and set the occasion of garden park development.

In the early decades of the twentieth century landscape architects, city planners, and social reformers alike dreamed of the possibilities of improvement of urban civic life through better order of the physical environment. An improved physical environment was believed to lead to improved behavior, health, and society by conservative social reformers and radical material feminists alike . This belief in environmental determinism was promoted by various plans and movements including the garden city and city beautiful movements . For both of these movements gardens were part of designs intended to address a multitude of social problems, including disease and lack of physical health, crime, and social unrest. Los Angeles was one of the geographic centers of experimentation for the Garden City and Arts and Crafts Movements from 1910- 1920s and California saw much experimentation with utopian architectural form and urban design . In Richmond CA, the Arts and Crafts Movement inspired many kitchen gardens and orchards still located on the lots of the bungalows built in the early 1900s . While not always at the center of plans for social reform, gardens were seen as an appealing strategy due to their relative low costs, ease of implementation and almost immediate results. Land speculation was blamed for creating vacant, trashfilled lots that could lead to social misbehavior . In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Garden Club started a neighborhood improvement campaign in 1911 by planting 325 vacant lots and encouraging other citizens to plant on 700 other vacant properties . The Club, which frequently started gardens on lots without owner permission, encouraged members not to make permanent structures and maintained a policy that gardeners would vacate spaces within five days of an owner’s request . In addition to vacant lot cultivation, civic improvement campaigns focused on the home garden as a site for social change. A person’s health and moral quality could be judged by the appearance of their garden. Garden clubs and social reforms advocated that a well-maintained, orderly home garden indicated a responsible homeowner or tenant who valued health, frugality, nutrition, family friendly recreation, and positive occupation of one’s personal time regardless of a person’s economic status or cultural heritage . Women’s associations played a vital role in this promotion. In San Francisco and Marin, women’s garden clubs played a significant role in promoting conservation and civic improvement campaigns . Utopian visions of the built urban or suburban environment that had an important place for the garden continued to be explored into the 1930s. In 1916 in what was to become East Palo Alto, Charles Weeks developed the Weeks Poultry Commune by combining the utopian socialist ideal of small independently owned farming communities of William E. Smythe with his own “Weeks Poultry Method” for compact poultry production . Small plots were sold to over 1,200 families who developed working gardens and chicken coops in this suburban agrarian development. In 1922, city planner John Nolen designed an early industrial suburb outside of Cincinnati that included allotment gardens for working-class residents . In the 1930s, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the ‘Broadacre City’ as a model to do away with the cities of the early twentieth century in favor of the quintessence of emerging suburbia. Cities would allocate one acre of land to each family where gardening would be encouraged . During the Depression era, federally supported housing and urban planning experiments frequently included gardening for self-sufficiency as an important design element, such as the case of the Broadacre inspired Greenbelt town . Later the victory gardens in Davis provided inspiration to developers leading to community garden integration into subdivision designs for the city . Both the Broadacre City and the Weeks development, while larger scale and more utopian in their design, were emblematic of early urban gardening, which frequently explicitly valued the importance of maintaining or reconnecting with the rural agrarian roots of American culture and sustenance. The deep one-half to one acre lots with short ends facing the street can still be seen in the urban layout of East Palo Alto.During both World War I and World War II large, federally supported gardening programs enrolled civilians in supporting war efforts by improving national diets and habits while making resources available for the war efforts. Gardens became essential tools in campaigns to advance patriotism and encourage public participation in war efforts . As John Brucato, San Francisco Victory Garden leader, observed “food was considered one of the most important weapons of war” . During WWI when it was necessary to export portions of the domestic food supply, liberty gardens were also used to supplement food during shortages through a federal strategy of asking citizens to voluntarily substitute food purchases with garden produce.