Seattle's Unemployed Turn Vacant Lots Into Gardens
A relief committee has placed sixty-seven families on borrowed land and handed out seed, but most applicants live in the north end while most lots are in the south.
The committee in charge of the vacant-lot plan has allotted land to sixty-seven persons and distributed seed to them; others have formed a colony and secured a tract of land for themselves. The committee is now in need of land at the north end of the city, where most of the applicants for allotments live. Nearly all the tracts so far loaned are at the south end, where few of the applicants live. The supply of seed has also run out, and more is needed. William Cochrane yesterday donated one ton of potatoes. Mr. Cochrane's example is worthy of emulation by his neighbors. Some of the applicants have cleared their lots by hand, and are [already] having put in their seed.
“The committee is now in need of land at the north end of the city, where most of the applicants for allotments live.”
The vacant-lot garden scheme is an early Seattle mutual-aid response to unemployment, pairing land with seed so families could feed themselves. It echoes modern urban-farm and land-access projects, down to the geographic mismatch between where help is offered and where people actually live.
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