Victory Gardens to Sprout Up with Saturday Blitz

Access to fresh, healthy food is a right, Gretchen Mead says, even for city dwellers.

A small army of volunteers will take to yards in Milwaukee and Shorewood next week, pushing some hundreds of pounds of soil and seeding more than 220 raised beds in the Victory Garden Initiative's fourth annual "Victory Garden Blitz."

The message: look beyond the produce aisle and into their own yards.

“We're going to be moving close to 300 yards of soil all around the city, so it’s no small task,” executive director of the Victory Garden Initiative and Shorewood resident Gretchen Mead said. “We are a non-profit that wants to see social justice in the food system."

VGI engages people in creating a new food system by providing them with the means to build gardens in their homes, schools and communities.

"It's about environmental justice and sustainability issues," Mead said. "People are joining the food movement because they no longer want to participate in the current agricultural, corporate-industrial regime, dare I say it."

People are also seeing a connection between illness and the food they choose to consume.

For $150, volunteers will build a 4 foot by 8 foot raised garden bed with untreated lumber and high-quality organic soil in a resident's backyard, Mead said.

Last year, VGI looked to build 100 beds, but this year it looks to triple that and install 300.

To reach that goal, the previously one-day event is being expanded to a weeklong campaign running Saturday through May 26, to see how many gardens they can raise in Milwaukee.

For those who can’t afford the $150, VGI Program Manager Jazz Glastra said Victory Garden will work with them.

“We don’t want to turn people away,” Glastra said.

Tuesday is the deadline to register for a garden bed. Visit VGI's website to sign-up.

Mead said while VGI’s niche is residential gardens, this year they are really expanding to several local churches, non-profits, food pantries and other organizations that took an interest in seeding community gardens.

“What we are seeing is a trend that social services, agencies or other non-profits that serve people are broadening their scope of service to ensure the people they work with have access to high-quality food,” Mead said.

Glastra added she spoke with a man in a Washington Park neighborhood who wants to plant 16 garden beds near a church across the street from his house, not only as a source of food, but an activity for bored youth.

“It’s a source of a creative activity for young people in his neighborhood that don’t have anything to do,” she said.

VGI grew its legs in Shorewood about four years ago when Mead launched the blitz and some residents started by seeding gardens in their front yards and in the parkway, the green space behind the sidewalk and street.

Mead said she used to live in a rural area where she was always gardening, so once she moved to Shorewood it didn't fit. But, she decided her front yard was the best place to start her food garden.

"I always say growing food in your front yard is the new front porch. It's a way that you can connect to your neighbors," she said.

"For the blitz, others started growing food in their front yard and at that time the Village of Shorewood didn't know how to respond," Mead added. "That sort of increased the tension about growing food in front yards."

And, in no time it became national news, Mead said.

"It was interesting that this was a story that people across the country wanted to hear," she said. "It was a big deal that it was such an issue that happened in little Shorewood about this garden bed. It empowered the Victory Garden Initiative to be a voice of a different way of looking at the future; a different way of looking a community building; a different way of looking at our food system."

The village started to discuss implementation of an ordinance to prohibiting front-yard gardening. Several people formed a committee to respond to the potential new ordinance, but what ended up happening was the ordinance wasn't altered meaning front yard gardens were still allowed, excluding the parkway.

In the past, victory gardens have been a community effort in times of war. While the spirit of unity and self-sufficiency hasn’t changed, VGI has refocused to create its own war; a war on apathy and a vulnerable corporate food system, which relies on oil and other natural resources.

Mead added people might be joining the food movement out of fear, with the economy in shambles and many struggling to provide.

"I kind of believe that’s the reason why the victory garden imagery is so powerful,” Glastra added. “In WWII, there was this sort of what if; what if the economy crashes."

VGI has recently also started a program where they match experienced gardeners with not-so experienced gardeners.

VGI is still looking for volunteers. For more information on victory gardens and how to get involved visit http://www.victorygardeninitiative.org/.