Community gardens are cropping up at public libraries everywhere
Guests come to the library to talk about worms and beekeeping. Harvests never disappoint, and most of the produce goes home with the children who participated.
By Noah Lenstra
Shareable
August 13, 2020
Excerpt:
According to historian Robert Searing, the Eastwood branch of the public library in Syracuse, New York, hosted a community garden during World War II after “a group of kids” teamed up to make it happen.
“They each brought a penny in to help buy seeds,” he said in a television news interview, “and they cultivated a garden right on the grass in the front of the library.”
At the same time, in San Bernardino County, California, librarians were growing a large selection of herbs and salad vegetables at the library victory garden.
“It was a fairly common sight,” one librarian recalled, “to see librarians in Levis and other suitable garb at work on their spring garden in the library’s back yard.”
Although many of these library gardens disappeared after the end of World War II, some continued, creating a precedent for the profusion of library-based community gardens currently cultivated across the United States and beyond.
