The Victory Garden Initiative

Grow food. Feed neighbors. Build resilience.

Grow food in pots, a yard, or a shared plot. Find a garden, start small, and share your harvest.

Get growing

Find a community garden near you, start one of your own, or see what to plant right now.

Enter your ZIP code to see community gardens nearby. Listings with open plots are flagged so you can get growing right away.

Plant right now (fall)
Garlic
Spinach & hardy greens
Lettuce under cover

Growing seasons vary — open the Plant Right Now tab for picks matched to your area.

What is a Victory Garden?

Grow a little. Learn together. Share the harvest.

A proven idea

Families have grown victory gardens to supplement food in difficult times.

Start small

A few seasonal crops can add fresh food to your meals.

Grow together

Share skills and surplus with neighbors.

Share your harvest

A productive garden almost always grows more than one household can eat. Anyone with extra produce can post it on the community surplus board, and neighbors nearby can claim it for free — turning extra zucchini into someone else's dinner instead of compost.

Why now

The conditions of 2026 differ in form from the 1940s, but the case for local food resilience is just as practical. The numbers below come from public sources.

~42 million
Americans on SNAP
Receiving food assistance each month
Up to ~5 million
Projected to lose benefits
CBO estimate under the 2025 budget law
+26%
Food prices since 2020
Outpacing wages for many households
20 million
WWII Victory Gardens
U.S. households that grew their own food

Tighter food assistance

The 2025 federal budget law expanded SNAP work requirements and shifted costs to states — the Congressional Budget Office projects millions fewer participants in the coming years.

Higher costs, fragile supply

Groceries, fertilizer, and shipping all cost more than they did in 2020 — and those increases hit lower-income households hardest.

The local opportunity

Community gardens, urban farms, and extension programs already exist in nearly every American city and town — a ready foundation for a movement that starts in your own neighborhood.

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service; Congressional Budget Office; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; The National WWII Museum. Figures are estimates and projections; projections of future program changes are inherently uncertain.

The technology is ready. The need is real.

Put your community on the map. Register your garden, connect your neighbors, and help turn a food-access platform into a food-resilience movement.