1914-1918
Wartime Efforts
09
As WWI expanded overseas, Samuel Bodine served on the Executive Committee of the Citizens Soldier’s Aid Committee (1916), and after the US was drawn into the war in 1917, Samuel Bodine chaired the Committee on Disbursements for the War Welfare Council that organized re-employment of veterans.
On the homefront at Stoneleigh, there was a shift away from the previous years of acclaim at Flower Shows, and instead the greenhouse complex, sprawling vegetable and fruit gardens became places that fed the community and the training grounds for women aspiring to careers in gardening and horticulture.
Victory Gardens
Through newspapers, we learn that in 1917 Samuel T. Bodine was a leader of the “Main Line Community War Garden Committee.” The Committee organized donations of unused land one mile north and south of the Pennsylvania Rail Road all the way from Merion to Villanova along with seed, equipment, horses, and labor to produce potatoes, beans, cabbages, carrots, turnips, and onions that sustained the community through wartime shortages. We learn that as their high school studies wrapped up for the year, young women in Philadelphia were "registering for farm work during the summer... planting, cultivating, pickling, and canning foods” which echoes information about the women who worked in Stoneleigh’s gardens. By May 1917, over 400 acres had been planted along the Main Line as the Committee worked in conjunction with the National Emergency Food Garden Commission in Washington D.C.
Comparing maps of the 65-acre property produced in 1921 by renowned landscape architects Olmsted Brothers with landscape features on Google Earth, we estimate the extent of these Victory gardens at approximately 2.5 food-producing acres (in addition to the 1-acre greenhouse complex) Family oral history also tells that the Bodines planted large food gardens across Spring Mill Road during the war. There was an approximately 1 acre vegetable garden across Spring Mill Road, according to a 1921 survey of the property by Civil Engineer W.S. Nichols.
The Olmsted map below is just one of hundreds of pages of their records on this property accessible in the Library of Congress and the National Park System's Olmsted Archives, showing the level of expertise and thought that went into the stewardship of this place through the 1950s.
The maps also provide information on some of what was being grown: apples, pears, cherries, gooseberries, and currants, alongside large vegetable beds. And the maps provide information on the landscape that surrounded and supported this food production with ecosystem services like water retention and pollination - for example, every single tree is mapped along with its species name and diameter over a century ago.
And where did all this food go? The historical record reveals that the Bodine family’s Stoneleigh was feeding the community during a time of war and hardship.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library has a special collection of WWI-era war garden posters that help us contextualize and understand the power of Stoneleigh’s untold history and the meaning of this history today.
You can see one garden surrounded by a white picket fence. This was not how the original garden appeared. The Pentecoste & Vitale design and Olmsted blueprints indicates that where this fence line now is was a patio in the middle of a symmetrical line of weeping mulberries. More gardens were located within the walls of the greenhouse complex, which we will explore later on this tour. To your right is the south property line where, over the fence on the Stoneleigh side of a berm (a steep slope), is the location of one of these Victory Gardens.
You may be wondering by now who worked the gardens. That may be, perhaps, the most interesting story of all at Oakwell. Please read on to learn about Eleanor Bodine and her innovative training program for young women.
