The USSGA had posters and images promoting the program. Here are links to some of them.
Title: Follow the Pied Piper. Join the United States School Garden Army.
Description: Poster shows Uncle Sam playing a fife, leading a group of children carrying gardening tools and a seed bag.
Title: Helping Hoover in our U.S. school garden.
Description: World War I public service poster showing two bare-foot children with a wheelbarrow full of vegetables.
Title: Join the United States school garden army - Enlist now / Edward Penfield.
Description: Poster showing a girl plowing.
Title: War gardens over the top The seeds of victory insure the fruits of peace / Barney, Maginel Wright, 1877-1966, artist
Description: Poster shows boy with hoe chasing fleeing vegetables to illustrate the success of growing food in local "victory gardens." Part of the National War Garden Commission's campaign to encourage Americans to raise more food and free resources for the United States military needs in World War I.
For similar posters and/or photographs of this era, click on a subject heading below to see what's in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC).
Gardening--1910-1920. (4)
National War Garden Commission--1910-1920. (12)
Vegetables--1910-1920. (3)
Victory gardens--1910-1920. (4)
Here are some images of school gardens and children from the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. Grouped roughly in chronological order.
Title: Kindergarten in a vegetable garden, Washington, D.C.
Date: 1899?
Description: Kindergarten in a vegetable garden, Washington, D.C.
Title: War Garden: Sheridan School.
Date: between 1910-1920
Description:
School children in front of and on sign for the Sheridan School War
Gardens. Teachers present. Sign reads: Sheridan School
War Gardens
Trespassers, destroyers & thieves beware $100.00 fine one year imprisionment
dogs are subject to the law keep them off
Title: School
garden, produced by NYA (National Youth Administration) girls, with the
help and guidance of Mr. Ellis Whitaker, vocational director and
principal of school. Flint River Farms, Georgia.
Date: May 1913
Description: Student gardening in an open field.
Title: Sacramento--a children's garden.
Date: 1916
Description: School children, posed with their teachers, by their garden, Sacramento, California.
Title: School garden - Jefferson School.
Date: March 1917
Description: See Bliss report. Location: Muskogee, Oklahoma / Lewis W. Hine
Title: Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. Coal mine--Bayview, Alabama, White School garden.
Date: 1918
Description: Children gardening.
Title: A school garden, where work is play.
Date: Oct. 6, 1919
Description: Children working in garden on school grounds.
Title: Working in school garden, Gees Bend, Alabama.
Date: May 1939?
Description: Student working in school garden.
Title: Behind the homemade plow in the school garden, Gees Bend, Alabama
Date: May 1939?
Description: Three stutents plowing school garden.
Title: Behind the homemade plow in the school garden, Gees Bend, Alabama.
Date: May 1939?
Description: Young boy student behind the homemade plow in the school garden.
Title: School garden. Gee's Bend, Alabama.
Date: May 1939?
Description: Students working in school garden.
Title: School garden. Gee's Bend, Alabama.
Date: May 1939?
Description: Students working in school garden.
Title: School principal helping student in school garden, Flint River Farms, Georgia.
Date: May 1939?
Description: School principal helping student in school garden, Flint River Farms, Georgia.
Title: Turlock,
California. Housewife, who is president of the PTA (Parent-Teacher
Association), hands tomato plants to workman for planting in school
garden.
Date: May 1942
Description: The tomatoes will be used
for school lunches and the surplus canned. The hot lunch program in the
school sponsored by the PTA; will continue it alone if the WPA (Work
Projects Administration) help is discontinued. All children of all ages
and income groups gained in weight with hot lunches.
Title: Turlock,
California. Housewife who is president of PTA (Parent Teacher
Association) with armload of tomato plants which will be planted in
school garden. The tomatoes will be used for school lunches, and the
surplus canned.
Date: May 1942
Description: Turlock,
California. Housewife who is president of PTA (Parent Teacher
Association) with armload of tomato plants which will be planted in
school garden. The tomatoes will be used for school lunches, and the
surplus canned.
Title: Orange,
Texas. Extended school day program in the public schools. These
children are working on their garden after the regular school day is
over, waiting for their parents to finish work and call for them.
Date: May 1943
Description:
These children are working on their garden after the regular school day
is over, waiting for their parents to finish work and call for them.
Title: Washington
public schools go to war. The public schools of Washington, D.C., like
those in most other sections of the country, have revised their
curricula to fit the pupils for fuller participation in the war effort.
They have gone all-out for the Program of Civilian Defense. Many of the
schools have their Victory Gardens.
Date: April 1943
Description: Photo shows boys preparing the soil for their community Victory Garden under supervision of one of their teachers.
Title: Victory Gardens--for family and country.
Date: Feb.-Mar. 1943
Description: Hopscotch has been supplanted by a new and serious game for these Girl Scouts--it's called Plant the Victory Garden. Like thousands of other school-age youngsters, Pat Nelson, Doris Laclair and Barbara Redford, all of San Francisco, are enthusiastic participants in the nation-wide Food for Victory campaign. Doris seems to be jumping the gun slightly, but at this stage cookies are more palatable than embryonic cabbages.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Students and teacher in school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Students and teacher in school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Two students in their school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Female student in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Students and teacher in school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Female student in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Female student eating a carrot? in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Students and teacher in school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Three young students in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: Two young boy students in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: One young girl student in the school garden.
Title: Children's school victory gardens on First Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, New York, New York.
Date: June 1944
Description: One young boy student in the school garden.
Title: Keysville, Virginia. Randolph Henry High School. Working in garden of home economics cottage.
Date: June 1943
Description: Students in the school garden.
Title: Keysville, Virginia. Working in garden of home economics cottage of Randolph Henry High School.
Date: June 1943
Description: Working in garden of home economics cottage of Randolph Henry High School.
Title: School children outside digging, making garden.
Date: ?
Description: New York; School children outside digging, making garden.
Title: School children outside digging, making garden.
Date: ?
Description: New York; School children outside digging, making garden.
Title: School children outside digging, making garden.
Date: ?
Description: New York; School children outside digging, making garden.
Title: School children outside digging, making garden.
Date: ?
Description: New York; School children outside digging, making garden.
Garden Song. The Playground, Vol. 12.3 (June 1918): 115-117.
This is the US School Garden Army "Garden Song" lyrics, written to the tune Over There and it's history.
Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture Program
More than 1200 images and PDF files surrounding the school gardening program in Cleveland from the early 1900s-1977. Part of the Cleveland Memory Project, Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.