[Just two days after the presidential election, Maggie Mosher, a retired history teacher from San Jose, California, began setting up raised beds in her backyard to build a winter garden. For Mosher, growing her own food was a way to cope with the results of the election, which she said left her feeling “overwhelmed and too depressed.”
Mosher was motivated to take control of her food supply, as President-elect Donald Trump had promised to deport immigrants who had crossed the border illegally, many of whom played a crucial role in helping to get food from farms to store shelves. Additionally, Trump had threatened to institute blanket tariffs on Mexico, a top source of produce for the US, which could lead to higher food costs for Americans.
Mosher, who lives on a fixed income, recognized that growing her own food was not a solution that would save her budget, but it was a way to alleviate some of the financial burden she could face. She plans to expand her garden to provide more food for her family and friends.
The trend of people doubling down on gardening efforts is not unique to Mosher. Capital Roots, a nonprofit organization that runs 55 community gardens in the Albany, New York, region, received 31 new membership applications from Election Day through the start of this year, nearly triple the number of applications it received for the same period last year and in 2022.
The organization’s CEO, Amy Klein, said that it’s unusual to see membership grow this much during the winter, when very little produce can be grown. The organization’s mission is to help people who lack the resources to grow food or knowledge to do so, and with “rising food costs and economic uncertainty, more people are turning to community gardening as a way to take control of their food supply,” Klein said.
Melany Bradshaw, 34, a licensed mental health counselor living in Albany, was one of those new membership applicants. She was inspired to join a community garden after the election, thinking that she could “try to make myself more sustainable and be able to have other options come 2025 for food outside the normal confines of capitalism.”
The produce grown at Capital Roots’ community gardens varies significantly across different neighborhoods, but many gardens grow fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, beans, and collards. Some gardens also grow more exotic crops such as bitter melon, amaranths, and pumpkins.
Robert Hunter, a 68-year-old retiree living in rural Arkansas, has been gardening for five years and grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. He preemptively purchased a commercial-grade wood chip shredder from Home Depot to make mulch, anticipating that the cost of machinery and appliances could increase if Trump follows through on his tariff threats.
Hunter believes that he’s relatively shielded from higher tariffs, at least when it comes to produce, since he has a surplus of seeds and a plethora of gardening tools on hand. He fully intends to continue gardening and has been donating any excess produce to local food pantries.
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