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New York
Just two days after Election Day, Maggie Mosher, a retired history teacher based in San Jose, California, began setting up raised beds to build a winter garden in her backyard. Never before had Mosher contemplated growing food in the winter as well as the peak growing months of the spring and summer.
Part of the impetus for the winter garden was to take her mind off the presidential election results, which she said left her feeling “overwhelmed and too depressed.” The other part: “To try to be a little proactive.”
That’s because President-elect Donald Trump has promised to deport immigrants who have crossed the border illegally, many of whom play a crucial role in helping get food from farms onto store shelves. He has also threatened to institute blanket tariffs, with some of the steepest floated rates on Mexico, a top source of produce for the US. That means Americans could be forced to pay a lot more for fruits and vegetables.
To get around that, more Americans want their own food supplies to tap into, creating a budding trend of people doubling down on gardening efforts.
The prospect of higher food costs, especially as someone living on a fixed income, is a huge source of concern for Mosher. Growing her own broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, peas, potatoes and carrots is a small but meaningful way to alleviate some of the financial burden she could face, she told .
Still, she recognizes, “it’s not like growing a head of cauliflower is going to save my budget.” Likewise for the freezer she bought post-election to start stockpiling meat and broths, which she inspired her sister to do as well.
Mosher, who lives with her adult daughter, plans to keep expanding the garden to be able to provide more food for family members and friends to save them some money as well.
Capital Roots, a nonprofit organization that runs 55 community gardens around the Albany, New York, region, received 31 new membership applications from Election Day through the start of this year. That’s nearly triple the number of applications they received for the same period last year and in 2022, according to Capital Roots data shared with .
The organization, which is celebrating its 50th year, had 840 active members last year with assigned plots they maintain, often with other people, such as relatives. Those members are guaranteed a spot this year if they wish to keep it. New members can apply anytime and are accepted based on the availability of plots.
It’s unusual to see membership grow this much during the winter, when very little produce can be grown, said Capital Roots CEO Amy Klein. That’s why the organization’s gardening season officially ended on November 15.
Some of the earliest community gardens in the US date back more than 100 years. Like many today, they involved people transforming vacant spaces, often in urban settings, to gain access to food, particularly during economically challenging periods. Community gardening gained more steam during World War I and II as part of the push to build “victory gardens” so that Americans were less reliant on other nations for food, also enabling people to supplement rations.
Another wave of community gardens took off in the 1970s as the cost of living, including food prices, soared after the Arab oil embargo. Capital Roots got its start during that period with a mission to help people who lacked the resources to grow food or knowledge to do so.
But with “rising food costs and economic uncertainty, more people are turning to community gardening as a way to take control of their food supply,” said Klein.
Melany Bradshaw, 34, a licensed mental health counselor living in Albany, was one of those 31 new membership applicants at Capital Roots.
The garden she applied to join is just a few blocks away from her home. She thought about applying many times as she passed by and observed people tending their plots.
“The election was the thing that really put me over the edge and made me apply for a spot,” she told . After the election, she thought, “Well, I really can’t control federal economic policy, but I can try to make myself more sustainable and be able to have other options come 2025 for food outside the normal confines of capitalism,” she said.
She’s still waiting to hear if she’ll receive a plot. Capital Roots told that it intends to notify new members next month.
There is a suggested $45 donation to sign up for a standard plot, which includes seeds, instruction and tools for the season. But the program does not turn down people who aren’t able to donate.
Financially, Bradshaw said she’s getting by, but she has no savings, is in $10,000 worth of credit card debt and is on the hook for $400 monthly student loan payments. “I’m better off than a lot of folks, but it’s still a struggle.”
“If new tariffs further drive up the already high cost of produce, we’d anticipate more interest in our community gardens,” Klein told . “People are increasingly looking for practical, cost-effective ways to manage their grocery bills, and our gardening program provides a way for families to save thousands in a single growing season.”
The produce grown varies significantly across Capital Roots’ community gardens. For instance, in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, especially from Southeast Asian countries, it’s common to find foods like bitter melon, amaranths, and numerous types of gourds and pumpkins, said Klein. “In other places, tomatoes, beans and collards are king.” Some gardens also grow grapes, raspberries and strawberries.
Robert Hunter was drawn to gardening well before Trump won a second term. Hunter, a 68-year-old retiree who lives in a rural part of Arkansas, said produce choices are limited at nearby grocery stores. To broaden his access to fruits and vegetables, he took up gardening five years ago.
Now he grows peppers, blackberries, pineapples, tomatoes, carrots, herbs and more. “Anything that’ll grow here I’ll try,” he said. As primarily a two-person household, he grows more food than he and his 15-year-old son and even nearby neighbors can eat. He has been donating the rest to local food pantries.
He fully intends to keep this up. To get ahead of potential new tariffs Trump may enact, he preemptively purchased a $2,700 commercial-grade wood chip shredder from Home Depot to make mulch. “I didn’t need it in November; I could have waited until spring, when the weather is a lot nicer. However, the motor is made in China, and it’s also made of a lot of metal,” he said. That prompted him to consider that it could get a lot more expensive if Trump follows through on the tariff threats he’s floated.
In his first term, Trump levied tariffs on steel from China that made the cost of metal-heavy machinery and appliances go up. This time around, he’s discussing across-the-board tariffs on China as well as Canada and Mexico, which also export a lot of steel to the US.
With the new shredder, Hunter thinks he’s relatively shielded from higher tariffs, at least when it comes to produce, since he’s got a surplus of seeds and a plethora of gardening tools on hand.
“I’m in pretty good shape compared to most people that are just starting to do something like this,” he told .
