Community gardens from coast to coast - 1974

 BACG History Post #14

Sylvia Porter (1913-1991) was the country's first personal finance columnist. She was a pioneer in the field of journalism who began writing about finance during the Great Depression. 

Porter's syndicated column, Your Money's Worth, appeared in newspapers across the country, including the Burlington Free Press and Rutland Herald.

In a column published in July, 1974, Porter wrote about the surge in vegetable gardening.

"Across the country, thousands of families are getting together, borrowing or leasing a few acres of vacant land, plowing and tilling them collectively, and dividing the space into a few dozen or a few hundred individual small plots." 

Porter's column listed the benefits of community gardening, including fresh food, exercise, and social contacts.

She encouraged readers to contact Gardens for All to request a free "how-to-do-it" manual for starting a community garden.

Led by the team of Tommy Thompson and Judy Loomis, Gardens for All responded to inquiries, while collecting information and building a contact list of community garden organizers in Vermont and nationwide.