'Recession gardens' sprouting up

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By Gillian Flaccus ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONG BEACH, Calif.

With the recession in full swing, many Americans are returning to their roots - literally - cultivating vegetables in their backyards to squeeze every penny out of their food budgets.

Industry surveys show double-digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year, and mail-order companies report such a tremendous demand that some have run out of seeds for basic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and peppers.

”People's home grocery budget got absolutely shredded, and now we've seen just this dramatic increase in the demand for our vegetable seeds. We're selling out,” said George Ball, chief executive officer of Burpee Seeds, the largest mail-order seed company in the U.S. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Gardening advocates, who have long struggled to get America grubby, have dubbed the newly planted tracts “recession gardens” and hope to shape the interest into a movement similar to the victory gardens of World War II.

Those gardens, modeled after a White House patch planted by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943, were intended to inspire self-sufficiency, and at their peak supplied 40 percent of the nation's fresh produce, said Roger Doiron, founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International.

Mr. Doiron and several colleagues are petitioning President Obama to plant a similar garden at the White House as part of his call for a responsible, eco-friendly economic turnaround. Proponents have collected 75,000 signatures on an online petition.

“It's really part of our history and it's part of the White House's history,” Mr. Doiron said. “When I found out why it had been done over the course of history and I looked at where we are now, it makes sense again.”

But for many Americans, the appeal of backyard gardening isn't in its history - it's in the savings.

The National Gardening Association estimates that a well-maintained vegetable garden yields a $500 average return per year. A study by Burpee Seeds claims that $50 spent on gardening supplies can multiply into $1,250 worth of produce annually.