The Fenway Victory Gardens will be celebrating its 80th anniversary on Saturday, July 16.

The 7.5-acre plot of land has around 500 individual gardens located at 1200 Boylston Street, near the Museum of Fine Arts. The gardens are operated by the Fenway Garden Society, a non-profit organization entirely composed of volunteers.

The gardens were originally created in 1942 to produce more fresh and locally grown food to send canned products overseas to troops fighting in World War II.

According to Chelsea Arnold, vice president of the Park, the gardens are the only remaining Victory Gardens in the United States to have continually operated in the same space since their creation during the war.

“It is Boston park land, we work with the city as stewards of the space that they provide to us to use for community garden purposes,” Arnold said. “Each of our gardeners, who is a member of our organization, is assigned a small plot of land that they are able to use to have a garden space.”

Consisting of over 475 individuals, the organization’s members, who are required to be Boston residents, are permitted to plant whatever they desire within their space as long as its contents fall within minor guidelines.

According to Arnold, some gardeners use the space entirely for ornamental purposes, whereas others utilize it for maximum vegetable production.

Certain members have held plots of land for decades, Arnold noted one member who is nearing their 50th year participating as a gardener, and another family who has had three generations participate in the organization.

“We run the full spectrum of age, the full spectrum of all different types of socio-economic situations, all different types of ethnicities, languages spoken…historically it was created as a place to grow food, and I think that community gardens around the city are really wonderful for creating opportunities like that, especially for people who may be food insecure or may have other challenges having fresh produce available to them,” said Arnold.

The Fenway Garden Society, which regularly hosts community events, will commemorate the anniversary on July 16 from 10 am to 2 pm with an open gardens event. Although technically in a public space, many of the gardens are not typically open to public viewing. “The gardens are usually private spaces. But what we do on an almost yearly basis are these open garden events where people will open up their gates and the public or other gardeners or anybody who's interested can come through and actually walk in and walk through certain gardens of people who have agreed to open up their spaces to share,” said Arnold.

“Our membership is constantly changing, we have some people who have been here for a long time, but we also have lots of people who come and go, and that also keeps a really interesting perspective on our membership.”