The team from ‘Radio Allotment’ in action in Park Crescent near Broadcasting House in February 1942. Wynford Vaughan Thomas, Raymond Glendenning and Henry Riddell do the double digging, while Michael Standing commentates with Roy Hay at his shoulder.
The designer of this innovative wartime poster was Hans Schleger, also known as Zéro. A German Jewish refugee, who had previously worked in Berlin and New York, he was influenced in his graphic designs by Modernism.
Soldiers help clear debris from the blitzed Bank underground station in the City of London on 14 January 1941. In the background stands the Royal Exchange, used as a banner site. The message that day was singularly appropriate.
Abram Games frequently designed information posters aimed at the armed services, with this one intended to encourage them to grow food on their bases. His motto was ‘maximum meaning, minimum means’ and he became famous for his ability to layer ideas, images and message into a single iconic design, as here.
A gardener tending his allotment close to the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. This was one of the most high profile (and photogenic) of public green spaces in London turned over to vegetable growing as part of the Dig for Victory campaign.
Well-organised allotments cultivated by the firemen of Redcross Street Fire Station, within sight of St Paul’s Cathedral, captured in late June 1942. This image shows clearly the effect of the Blitz on the City of London.
April 1943: National Fire Service officers, seen here rounding up pigs on the bomb-damaged site of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, would probably have been members of a pig club.
As with so much of the output of the Ministry of Agriculture’s publicity division, this poster is folksy but sensible and clear in its directions on how to make a compost heap. Compost was vital to the home gardener, since there were few other bulky soil improvers available.
The Ministry of Agriculture’s cropping plan for vegetables was designed to encourage gardeners, novice and experienced, to maximise production from their plots. It was admirably clear but required close attention (see below).
Even the Royal Family were pressed into service by the Ministry of Agriculture in its quest to get gardeners growing vegetables. In what must rank as one of the most eccentric publicity shots taken in wartime, the teenage Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, dressed identically but unsuitably, study the Ministry’s cropping plan in the Windsor Castle garden in 1943.
RAF personnel contemplate the vegetables they have grown on land surplus to service requirements at a show in September 1945.
Evelyn Dunbar was a war artist who painted pictures of women in the countryside. ‘A Canning Demonstration’ depicts a cavernous village hall in which the instructor, surrounded by her materials and watched over by a bossy organiser, is listened to by a group of village ladies. One of them has to sit near the door to welcome latecomers. There is both understanding and gentle humour in the portrayal of the women.
Members of the Mereworth Women’s Institute in Kent make jam in an orderly and purposeful manner in August 1943. By this point they had already produced more than 5,000 lbs of jam from fruit grown locally that would otherwise have gone to waste.
Rose hips collected by children and women are milled and processed at the Farm Ice Creamery works in Acton, west London, to make rose hip syrup, a substitute source of vitamin C in place of imported citrus fruits.
May 1941: Land Army girls receive horticultural training in the ‘frame-yard’ at the Somerset Agricultural Institute at Cannington. They wore a distinctive uniform of fawn breeches or dungarees, fawn shirt, a green tie, green V-neck jersey, thick woollen socks, Wellington boots or stout shoes, oilskin mac, slouch hat and arm band.
Female students work in the beautifully ordered walled garden of Waterperry School of Horticulture for Women, Oxfordshire. Cecil Beaton, who worked as a war photographer for the Ministry of Information, captured this image in the summer of 1943.
Miss Beatrix Havergal, inspiration for Miss Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s Matilda, teaches the students how to prune pear cordons in the walled garden at Waterperry. In the foreground are staked tomatoes.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (BBC WAC)
British Library Newspaper Reading Room, Colindale (BL)
Imperial War Museum Archives, Kennington (IWM)
John Innes Centre, Norwich (JIC)
Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex, Brighton (MOA)
Museum of English Rural Life, Reading (MERL)
National Allotments Society, Corby (NSALG)
The National Archives, Kew (TNA)
Northamptonshire Record Office, Wootton (NRO)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBGK)
Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library, Westminster (RHS)
Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, Whitechapel (WL)
Country Life
Daily Express
Daily Telegraph
Evening Standard (London)
Extracts from the Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural Society
The Field
The Gardeners’ Chronicle
Home and Country
Journal of the Kew Guild
Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society
The Listener
My Garden
The Times
Books
There are very few books that deal specifically with the subject of gardening during the Second World War. They are: The Wartime Kitchen and Garden by Jennifer Davies (BBC Books, 1993), which accompanied the television series of the same name; Digging for Victory: Gardens and Gardening in Wartime Britain by Twigs Way and Mike Brown (Sabrestorm, 2010); The Spade as Mighty as the Sword by Daniel Smith (Aurum, 2011); and The Ministry of Food by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hodder and Stoughton, 2010). All tell different aspects of the story and all are worth reading.
Allingham, Margery, The Oaken Heart (Michael Joseph, 1941 and Hutchinson, 1959)
Artiss, Percy, Market Gardening: A Practical Guide to the Commercial Cultivation of Flowers and Vegetables (Collingridge, 1948)
Becker, Robert, Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Her World, Her Art (Knopf 1996)
Bedford, Sarah, George VI (Penguin, 2011)
Benton, Alison, Cheals of Crawley: The Family Firm at Lowfield Nurseries 1860s to 1960s (Moira Publications, 2002)
Brickhill, Paul, The Great Escape (Sheridan Book Company, 1995)
Briggs, Asa, The War of Words (OUP, 1970)
Broad, Richard and Fleming, Suzie (eds.), Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 (Profile Books, 2006)
Brown, Jane, A Garden of Our Own: A History of Girton College Garden (Friends of Girton Garden, 1999)
Calder, Angus, The People’s War: 1939– 45 (Jonathan Cape, 1969)
Central Statistical Office, Statistical Digest of the War (HMSO and Kraus, 1975)
Chamberlain, Joanne, Trench Warfare: A Study of ‘Dig for Victory’ in Brighton and Hove During World War Two (unpublished dissertation, University of Sussex, 2001)
Chamberlin, E. R., Life in Wartime Britain (Batsford, 1972)
Cheveley, Stephen, A Garden Goes to War (J. Miles, 1940)
Clarke, Gill, The Women’s Land Army: A Portrait (Sansom, 2008)
Collingham, Lizzie, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (Penguin, 2012)
Conford, Philip, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Floris Books, 2001)
Cowell, Cyril and Adams, Morley, Adam the Gardener: A Pictorial Guide to Each Week’s Work (Chatto and Windus, 2011)
Croall, Jonathan, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?: Voices from the Home Front (Sutton, 2005)
Crouch, David and Ward, Colin, The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture (Faber and Faber, 1988)
Donnelly, Peter (ed.), Mrs Milburn’s Diaries: An Englishwoman’s Everyday Reflections 1939– 45 (Harrap, 1979 and Abacus, 1995)
Dudgeon, Piers, Village Voices: A Portrait of Change in England’s Green and Pleasant Land 1915–1990 (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1989)
Dunn, Mary, The World of Lady Addle (Robin Clark, 1985)
Earley Local History Group, Suttons Seeds: A History 1806–2006 (Earley Local History Group, 2006)
Elliott, Brent, The Royal Horticultural Society: A History 1804–2004 (Phillimore, 2004)
Ender, Peter, Up the Garden Path (Herbert Jenkins, 1944)
Foreman, Susan, Loaves and Fishes: an Illustrated History of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food 1889–1989 (HMSO, 1989)
Games, Naomi, Moriarty, Catherine, and Rose, June, Abram Games: His Life and Work (Princeton, 2003)
Gardiner, Juliet, Wartime: Britain 1939–1945 (Headline Review, 2005)
Garfield, Simon, Private Battles: How the War Almost Defeated Us (Ebury Press, 2007)
Garfield, Simon, We are at War (Ebury Press, 2009)
Garner, Gwen, Extra Ordinary Women: A History of the Women’s Institutes (WI Books, 1995)
Gibson, Trish, Brenda Colvin: A Career in Landscape (Frances Lincoln, 2011)
Gillies, Midge, The Barbed-Wire University; The Real Lives of Prisoners of War in the Second World War (Aurum, 2011)
Goodall, Felicity, Voices from the Home Front: Personal Experiences of Wartime Britain 1939–45 (David and Charles, 2004)
Goodchild, Claude and Thompson, Alan, Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps (Penguin, 1941)
Graham, E., Gardening in War-time (Peter Davies, 1940)
Hall, Sir Daniel, Agriculture in the Twentieth Century – Essays on Research, Practice, and Organization to be presented to Sir Daniel Hall (Clarendon, 1939)
Harris, Alexandra, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (Thames and Hudson, 2010)
Harrisson,Tom and Madge, Charles (eds.) War Begins at Home (Chatto and Windus, 1940)
Hay, Roy, Gardener’s Chance: From War Production to Peace Possibilities (Putnam, 1946)
Hayes, Nick and Hill, Jeff, Millions Like Us? (Liverpool University Press, 1999)
Hellyer, A.G., Your New Garden (Collingridge, 1937)
Helphand, Kenneth I., Defiant Gardens; Making Gardens in Wartime (Trinity University Press, 2006)
Herklots, G. A. C., Vegetables in South-East Asia (George Allen and Unwin, 1972)
Horwood, Catherine, Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010)
Howard, Sir Albert, An Agricultural Testament (OUP, 1940)
Humphris, Ted, Garden Glory: From Garden Boy to Head Gardener at Aynhoe Park (Collins, 1988)
Huxley, Gervas, Lady Denman GBE (Chatto and Windus, 1961)
Jeffery, Philip, Harvest of the Spade (Longmans, Green, 1944)
Jenkins, Inez, The History of the Women’s Institute Movement of England and Wales (OUP, 1953)
Keen, Barbara and Armstrong, Jean, Herb Gathering (Brome and Schimmer, 1941)
King, Peter, Women Rule the Plot (Duckworth, 1999)
Kitchen, Penny (ed.), For Home and Country: War, Peace and Rural Life as Seen Through the Pages of the WI Magazine 1919–1959 (Ebury Press, 1990)
Koa Wing, Sandra (ed.), Our Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War (Profile Books, 2008)
Kynaston, David, A World to Build: Austerity Britain 1945–48 (Bloomsbury, 2007)
Lawrence, W. J. C., Catch the Tide: Adventures in Horticultural Research (Grower Books, 1980)
Lawrence, W. J. C., (ed.), The Fruit, the Seed and the Soil: Collected Edition of the John Innes Leaflets Numbers 1 to 9 (Oliver and Boyd, 1954)
Lees-Milne, Alvilde and Verey, Rosemary (eds.), The Englishman’s Garden (Allen Lane, 1982)
Lees-Milne, James, Caves of Ice (Chatto and Windus, 1983)
Longmate, Norman, The Way We Lived Then (Hutchinson, 1971)
Longmate, Norman, The Home Front (Chatto and Windus, 1981)
Longworth, Philip, The Unending Vigil: A History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission 1917–1984 (Leo Cooper in association with Secker and Warburg, 1985)
Mackay, Robert, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (Manchester University Press, 2002)
Maddy, Ursula, Waterperry: A Dream Fulfilled (Merlin Books, 1990)
Mauduit, Vicomte de, They Can’t Ration These (Michael Joseph, 1940)
McCall, Cicely, Women’s Institutes (Collins, 1943)
McCooey, Chris (ed.), Despatches from the Home Front: The War Diaries of Joan Strange 1939–1945 (Monarch, 1989 and JAK Books, 1994)
McLaine, Ian, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (Allen and Unwin, 1979)
Middleton, C. H., Digging for Victory: Wartime Gardening with Mr Middleton (Aurum, 2008)
Middleton, C. H., Mr Middleton Suggests (Ward Lock, 1939)
Nicholas, Siân, The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939–1945 (Manchester University Press, 1996)
Nicolson, Nigel (ed.), Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters 1939– 45 (Fontana, 1970)
Patten, Marguerite, Victory Cookbook: Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1940–1954 (Chancellor Press, 2002)
Purcell, Jennifer, Domestic Soldiers: Six Women’s Lives in the Second World War (Constable, 2010)
Richardson, Tim, English Gardens in the Twentieth Century (Aurum, 2005)
Rix, Martyn and Alison, Garden Open Today (Viking, 1987)
Robinson, Jane, A Force to be Reckoned With: A History of the Women’s Institute (Virago, 2011)
Robinson, John Martin, Felling the Ancient Oaks: How England Lost its Great Country Estates (Aurum, 2011)
Robinson, William, The English Flower Garden (John Murray, 1898 edn.)
Rohde, Eleanour Sinclair, Vegetable Cultivation and Cooking (Medici Society, 1958)
Sackville-West, Vita, The Land (William Heinemann, 1926)
Sackville-West, Vita, The Garden (Michael Joseph, 1946)
Sackville-West, Vita, The Women’s Land Army (Imperial War Museum, 1993)
Searle, Adrian, Isle of Wight at War 1939–45 (The Dovecote Press, 1990)
Spry, Constance, Come into the Garden, Cook (J M Dent, 1942)
Stent, Ronald, A Bespattered Page?: The Internment of ‘His Majesty’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens’ (André Deutsch, 1980)
Stewart, Sheila, Lifting the Latch: A Life on the Land (Day Books, 2002)
Strong, Roy, Binney, Marcus and Harris, John, The Destruction of the Country House 1875–1975 (Thames and Hudson, 1974)
Summer, Julie, Remembered: The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Merrell, 2007)
Taylor, James, Careless Talk Costs Lives: Fougasse and the Art of Public Information (Conway, 2010)
Thrower, Percy, My Lifetime of Gardening (Hamlyn, 1977)
Titmuss, R. M., Problems of Social Policy (HMSO, 1950)
Tree, Ronald, When the Moon was High: Memoirs of Peace and War 1897–1942 (Macmillan, 1975)
Tunnard, Christopher, Gardens in the Modern Landscape (Architectural Press, 1938)
Turner, W. J. (ed.), The Englishman’s Country (Collins, 1945)
Tyrer, Nicola, They Fought in the Fields (Tempus, 2007)
Verrill-Rhys, Leigh and Beddo, Deirdre (eds.), Parachutes and Petticoats: Welsh Women Writing on the Second World War (Honno, 1992)
Wade, John Reed, War-time Gardening (Pearson, 1940)
Wallace, T. and Marsh, R. W., Science and Fruit: Commemorating the Jubilee of the Long Ashton Research Station, 1903–53 (University of Bristol, 1953)
Waller, Margaret, London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (John Murray, 2004)
Ward, Sadie, War in the Countryside: 1939–45 (Cameron Books in association with David and Charles, 1988)
Waterson, Merlin, The National Trust: The First Hundred Years (BBC Books and National Trust, 1994)
Way, Twigs, Allotments (Shire, 2010)
Way, Twigs (ed.) Allotment and Garden Guide (Sabrestorm, 2009)
Webber, Ronald, Market Gardening: The History of Commercial Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Growing (David and Charles, 1972)
Wheatcroft, Harry, My Life with Roses (Odhams, 1959)
Wheatcroft, Harry, The Root of the Matter (Golden Eagle, 1974)
Williams, Marjorie, (ed. Cassandra Phillips), Letters from Lamledra: Cornwall 1914–1918 (Truran, 2007)
Williams, Tom, Digging for Britain (Hutchinson, 1965)
Wilson, Edward (ed.), The Downright Epicure: Essays on Edward Bunyard (Prospect Books, 2007)
Wood, Martin, Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style (Frances Lincoln, 2005)
Woolf, Leonard, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919–1939 (Hogarth Press, 1967)
Woolton, Lord, Memoirs of the Rt Hon. The Earl of Woolton C.H., P. C., D. L., Ll.D. (Cassell, 1959)
Articles and Pamphlets
Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of, Growmore Bulletin No. I: Food From the Garden (HMSO, 1941)
Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of, Dig for Victory Leaflets 1–26, (HMSO, 1941–45)
Conway, Hazel, ‘Everyday landscapes: public parks from 1930–2000’ in Garden History vol. 28, no.1
Elliott, Brent, ‘Bedding Schemes’ in The Regeneration of Public Parks eds. Jan Woudstra and Ken Fieldhouse (Spon, 2001)
Games, Abram in Art and Industry vol. 45, July 1948
Haynes, Barbara, ‘The Society at War’ in Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, Vol. 129, November 2004
Hess, Elizabeth, ‘Collecting Broom’ in The Chemist and Druggist, 18 April 1942.
Howkins, Alun, ‘A Country at War: Mass-Observation and Rural England 1939–45’ in Rural History, vol. 9, no. 1
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