The garden extended on the east side from the long vista (which led from the AP semi-circular hall through the New Garden, etc.) to the south at the Krestovy Canal and from the west the path along the Children’s Island pond. It appears to extend to the north only up to the right wing of the AP. Did the locals reap the harvest in August 1917? It is more than probable that the custodians/workers of the AP continued the garden in 1918 and beyond to the early 1920s. The museum had opened in June 1918. The land had been tilled, food shortages were becoming desperate.
Alexandr Polovtsov in “Les trésors d'art en Russie sous le régime bolcheviste” wrote that in 1918 “…At Tsarskoe Selo, in August, when the nights were already dark and cold, the guardian of the Chinese Theatre, who had built a garden there in the open park, complained to me that he and his wife were sleeping in turns because every night others were coming to steal their apples and turnips, etc…”
The American Relief Administration (ARA) headed by Herbert Hoover were installed in the AP Kitchen building by 1921 until the relief ceased in the summer of 1923.
Joanna
