Anderson Shelter Gardens

WHEN you're used to today's glamorous gardens, it's difficult to imagine what things were like for our grandparents - or possibly great grandparents - gardening in the 1940s. They had no tasteful patios, no comfy garden furniture or the enormous range of plants that we take for granted today, let alone extras like gazebos, gas barbecues and hot tubs. Frankly, it was all very basic. Wartime gardening was all about survival. Very little food was reaching this country from overseas, thanks to Hitler's U-boats sinking merchant shipping in the mid-Atlantic and, in the spring of 1940, rationing began. Everyday groceries such as sugar, butter, cheese, tea, cooking fat, meat and bacon - even sweets - were limited to a few ounces per person per week, so people had to fall back on what their gardens could produce.

The Dig For Victory campaign began in September that year, and everyone was encouraged to dig up their flowers and stripy lawns in favour of food production to help the war effort. Fun gardening was to vanish for years. The main feature of town gardens in wartime was the Anderson shelter. It was a big hole in the ground, roofed with curved metal sheets, on top of which all the excavated soil was piled, to provide extra shock-proofing. Down below, families put bunk beds and a few home comforts to sustain them when the air-raid sirens sounded and they had to take cover.

But inventive gardeners could make an Anderson shelter quite productive - inside, in the dark, they'd force rhubarb or raise mushrooms and outside, over the roof, they grew marrows. No, none of your fancy courgettes - these were huge, tasteless monsters which were stuffed with breadcrumbs and flavoured with herbs, fat and any savoury leftovers to make a typical thrifty wartime favourite called "mock goose" or the marrow, apple and ginger jam that people made instead of marmalade - oranges were simply unobtainable.

The rest of the back garden would be put down to veg, but nothing too fancy. What you needed were nutritious crops that filled you up. Runner beans were reliable, heavy croppers, and you could bottle or salt down your surplus, while winter veg, such as kale, cabbage and root crops, were vital for keeping the kitchen provided during the difficult months. Carrots, being sweet, were grated into cake and pudding mixture instead of sugar and parsnips could be baked with treacle to make "mock bananas."

If you have the room, you'd also have a hen run and rabbit hutches. Livestock was a great way of recycling garden rubbish as meat and eggs, and also meant free manure to put back on the garden. Sometimes groups of friends would start a pig club, pooling their kitchen scraps to feed a piglet, and then sharing out the hams and chops. Even the garden shed earned its keep. It was where you made your home brew, stored root crops, kept preserving pans and saved up empty jars and bottles ready for refilling. Smokers would grow their own tobacco plants in the garden then hang the giant leaves up in the shed roof to cure - it was allowed, as long as it was for your own use. Results were pretty variable, by all accounts, and a lot of smokers took to rolling their own, using mixtures of bramble leaves, wild herbs and suchlike instead - it must have been like puffing on an old bonfire. Front gardens would often be turned over entirely to spuds. They would keep well for months and could be dished up in hundreds of different ways. Flowers were out. If you grew any at all they had to be useful ones; nasturtium leaves were recommended for making into sandwiches, due more to their high vitamin C content. So next time you're picking your way through a packed garden centre or an overflowing mail order catalogue of garden goodies and wondering what to have next, just think how well-off we are today. We've never had it so good.

Source: Alan Titchmarsh www.express.co.uk