San Francisco City Hall - Victory Garden Emerges

July 12 is the official garden-with-Gavin event at San Francisco City Hall. In these days preceding the Victory Garden's community planting event, a new type of greenery is moving in at Civic Center Plaza.

The Victory Garden, in case you were wondering, does, in fact, harken back to the Victory Gardens of World Wars I and II. The push behind the gardens then was to compensate for food shortages and high produce prices -- by encouraging citizens to grow edibles on available urban and suburban grounds.

City Hall's food plots strive for a new kind of victory -- urban sustainability and food independence through growing your own greens. The cultivated crops will be donated -- with the help of local food banks and meal programs -- to those with limited access to healthy, organic produce. Slow Food Nation's timetable for this particular garden is a harvest on Labor Day weekend. It will be part of the Slow Food Nation '08 celebration.

Comments at sf.eater speak to the obvious concern of how a garden at Civic Center can sustain in and around the urban elements. It's the first time since 1943 that an edible garden finds itself in the shadow of City Hall. Victory Gardens have a robust history in San Francisco . . . a city which, at one time, had more than 250 garden plots in Golden Gate Park alone.

Check the progress in person or at the Slow Food Nation blog. Volunteers are always needed -- gardening experience is a plus but definitely not required. Experts and novices alike can be part of City Hall's new harvest.

^{Image Courtesy of Slow Food Nation}