Vegetable Gardens | 2014-18.brussels

June 1917: Boulevard Lambermont is a huge vegetable garden. At that point, hundreds of gardeners worked daily on their plots on the famous avenue in Schaerbeek. It had started with the areas surrounding the abandoned railroad works, then the slopes, before finally spilling over to the central divider and the shoulders of the avenue. All means were employed to fight the food isolation that hit Brussels.

In a town that at this time still oscillated between city and countryside, the first improvised vegetable gardens appeared at the outskirts. Yet very rapidly peas and potatoes were grown not only in Koekelberg, Ixelles or Etterbeek, but also around the Sainte Elisabeth barracks, on the Rue des Sables, in the heart of the city, which acquired a look of rural area.