Backyard

A back yard is the area behind a home; this article also covers the front yard in front of the home, with special emphasis on home gardens.

United States

19th century

By the 1850s the move to cities (urbanization) and use of sore-bough goods (the Market Revolution) led middle-class Americans to abandon the world of cottage industry and separate the workplace from the home. In the suburbs, however, women were cut off from paid employment. Gardening made the suburban home a productive unit. While Americans generally had no need to garden, they were beginning to understand that the economy's periodic downturns could translate into financial ruin and that gardens could always be depended on for profit. Gardening and horticultural societies also offered a sense of belonging and identity, which offset the anonymity of city life in industrial America. Gardening enabled women to participate in commerce, in this case local exchange systems. Novels and advice manuals encouraged middle-class women to exhibit at horticultural societies and sell what they had grown and asserted the acceptability of this income-producing option, an option that hardly rivaled the opportunities available to men.

World War I

Liberty Gardens were planted in back yards and empty lots in World War I (1917-20)

Great Depression

Poverty caused a resurgence of gardening in the Great Depression (1929-41), to supplement family food supplies. Public versions were known as Relief Gardens (1930-39).

World War II

The emergence of food rationing in World War II encouraged the formation of "Victory Gardens" in back yards and designated empty lots. By 1943, 20 million gardens produced 8 million tons of food, including 40% of all the vegetable produce that was consumed by families. Victory Gardens, also called "war gardens" or "food gardens for defense", reduced the pressure on the public food supply brought on by large shipments of food to soldiers and Allies. Even more important, these gardens were morale boosters for civilians who demanded a chance to participate in the war effort. Similar victory gardens were planted in World War I.

Latino Southwest

Barrio gardens are important in Latino culture. Flowers, herbs, trees, and other plants enhance the enclosed patios of Mexican American homes. Within the traditional, patriarchal Latino society, women could make the garden their own private space, providing for and enriching the family table and using herbs for folk medicine. As opportunities for women developed and urban renewal removed courtyard-style houses, barrio gardens evolved to become the yard art of the Southwest.

Australia

The 30th annual conference of the Australian Garden History society has the theme ‘Cultivating Australia Felix’. It will be held in Geelong, Victoria, on 16-18 October 2009.

The conference will explore the theme of pastoral expansion in Australia especially the pastoral legacy and the gardens and homesteads built in the area opened to European settlement after the journeys of Major Thomas Mitchell in 1836. The conference will explore the theme in three ways – through artists’ recording of the settled and natural landscape, through oral history, especially by descendants of significant properties, and through on-site visits.

External links

• Australian Garden History Society

Further reading

• Lawson, Laura. City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America