Special Events

Southeast Flower Show ~ February 2004

GPPA joined with the Atlanta History Center to go back in time to the 1940's and the typical Victory Gardens of the day. Members Brencie Werner and Sandra Sandefur co-chaired for GPPA, and they acknowledge the contributions of many individuals and companies whose efforts made this garden possible:

Plant materials: GardenSmith Greenhouse and Nursery, Goodness Grows, Home Depot Landscape Supply, Morrison Farms, Pike Nursery and Scottsdale Farm.
Hardscape: Atlanta History Center (AHC)
Plant maintenance: Mary Grace Brooks, Greenhouse Manager, AHC
Greenhouse Space: Buckhead Men's Garden Club, Lost Mountain Nursery
Brochure Design: Karin Guzy, Omnibus Media.

Enduring Perennials

THEME: This is an Atlanta garden during World War II. Americans were being encouraged to brighten their individual yards to help maintain the morale of the family and the public. They were urged to grow vegetables for their dining tables and brightly colored perennials and annuals to raise their spirits and those of their neighbors.

Perennials, biennials and annuals grace the 1940's garden to cheer the war weary.

Blue Baptisia bloom.

The garden was done in conjunction with the Atlanta History Center who featured a Victory Garden.

Implements of the era brought authenticity to the gardens.

USDA ZONE, LOCATION, EXPOSURE, SEASON:

Zone 7/8, Atlanta, Georgia, sunny front yard, Spring, 1943

Description: The background is a 1930’s bungalow style home with front porch. 1940’s style metal porch chairs and a Mathis Dairy milk box with glass milk bottles sit on the front porch. A blue star in the window indicates that this home has a family member serving in the armed forces. The sunny front yard is filled with shrubs, perennials and herbs in an attempt to raise the morale of the family and passers-by consumed with gloomy news of the war.

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVE:

At this time, when war with Iraq is foremost in the minds of the American public, we can remember another time when America was at war and the American public was being encouraged to use gardening as a means of lifting our spirits and supplying our dining tables. We hope this garden will rekindle the urge to garden in those citizens who remember the first “Victory Gardens’” and encourage those who are too young to remember to try gardening for victory of mind, spirit, and body. Time-tested perennials, heroes in our gardens, perform as well today as they did sixty years ago.

SPECIAL RESEARCH:

All plants were chosen from H. G. Hastings Seed catalogs including Spring 1940, 1941, and1943 and Winter 1941-42, 1942-43, and 1943-44. These are part of the collection in the Cherokee Garden Library, Center for the Study of Southern Garden History, Atlanta History Center. Additional books used for reference were The Southern Gardener by Dr. Floyd Bralliar, published in 1946, and The Southern Garden Book by Louise and Donald Hastings, published in 1948.

OTHER:

In the Spring 1943 Hastings Seed Catalog, Donald M. Hastings, President of H. G. Hastings wrote an article titled Victory Gardens, in which he says “Any program for the development of gardens for Victory must include the growing of trees, shrubs, and flowers, for the health of the mind, as well as vegetables for the health of the body, because ornamental gardening is a vital and absolutely essential part of American life today, and its value as a stimulus to national physical and spiritual well-being is beyond calculation.” True then, and still true today.