| Summary: | During the period of the German occupation, the French organisation known as the ‘Ligue du Coin de Terre et du Foyer’ (league of the plot of land and the hearth), founded in 1896 by the Abbé Lemire, was given the task by the Vichy authorities of promoting gardening activities. The law of 31 October 1941 created a veritable statute for workers’ allotment gardens and the league established a network of delegates to increase the number of vegetable gardens, to distribute grant money for each new gardening plot cultivated and to publish tracts and brochures. The number of gardens grew from 75,000 in 1939 to 250,000 in 1943, the year which saw their highest number, but not including industrial gardens or individual gardens. The league thought it was its duty to contribute to the provision of foodstuffs and to work alongside the Secours national, the national charitable and propaganda organisation. It managed, however, to put some distance between itself and the Vichy government, thanks in particular to Francisque Gay, a Christian democrat journalist who used the league as a front for his clandestine resistance activities. At the end of the war, the number of workers’ gardens declined, but their wartime contribution is probably at the origins of the law of 26 July 1952 which codified existing legislation on workers’ gardens, now called family gardens. The post-war reconstruction posed something of threat for these gardens, and the league, which changed its name to become the national federation of family gardens, undertook campaigns to convince planners and local authorities of the importance of including gardens in town-planning projects, and of protecting existing ones.
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