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  • Dig for Victory

  • Until Sep 30
    • FREE
  • This event has finished
  • Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, King Charles St, London, SW1A 2AQ
  • Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms

    © Imperial War Museum

  • By Fiona McAuslan

    Posted: Mon May 19

  • On the eve of war in Britain, 75 percent of produce was imported into the country. With the risk of merchant ships being blown out of the water by the Germans, not to mention the difficulty of transporting food around the country, the home front fought back with an initiative to encourage people to grow their own. Dovetailing this historic morsel with our current interest in food provenance and organic farming, the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, in conjunction with Royal Parks, has opened its Dig for Victory allotment in St James’s Park for the second year running with a theme of War on Waste.

    Divided into two, the allotment plot has ‘modern’ vegetables such as pak choi on one side and on the other authentic WWII produce such as UK strains of tomato, neat rows of carrot tops and bushy cabbage – all grown organically.

    Information boards display facts (many London streets had a communal bin to collect scraps for pigs that would be taken to a central processing plant in Westminster) and recipes (our favourite being mock bananas made from mashed parsnip and banana essence).

    This year’s theme emphasises recycling and sustainability and throughout summer there will be sustainability Sundays with gardening experts on hand to offer tips and answer questions about growers’ current problems.

    There are also activities for kids, including half-term sessions when home front officers in costume and character will dispense advice and information as they used to on countrywide tours during the war.
    Back at the museum a Make Do and Mend exhibition continues the theme, showing how people combated the clothing rationing which began in 1941.
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