L. H. Bailey, 1918

L. H. Bailey was a botanist who is credited with starting ag extension services, 4-H, and a lot of other things rural (Wikipedia). He and other authors wrote some very inspiring gardening books full of practical information for gardeners at the end of WWI, when a world-wide shortage of food was not just a threat, but a terrifying reality. Millions in destroyed European countries faced starvation, and farmers were off fighting. Enter the Victory Garden movement (you thought that originated in WWII? Nope. Earlier.) Charles Lathrop Pack, Bolton Hall, and other authors including Bailey contributed by publishing widely distributed, practical guides encouraging people to convert the "slacker land" of vacant lots, backyards, and even land around factories into fruitful gardens. According to Pack's The War Garden Victorious, millions of pounds of food were freed from American consumption to be sent overseas. These books are out of copyright (and print) and available on Google for free. If you have a ready source of horse manure for fertilizer, and are willing to do a lot by hand, they can help. Here's a quote from Bailey's Manual of Gardening a comprehensive guide to landscaping as well as vegetable gardening:

"The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily, on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little.
In the vast majority of cases, a person will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the plants that thrive happen not to be the ones he planted, they are plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.
We are wont to covet the things we cannot have; but we are happier when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty pigweeds, crowding and growing in luxurious abandon, may be a better and more worthy object of affection than a bed of coleuses in which every spark of life and spirit and individuality has been sheared out and suppressed... Love the things nearest at hand; and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the gate of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market,"How much there is in the world that I do not want!"

Still relevant after all these years.