Re: gardenwriters Digest, Vol 61, Issue 6

**C* W* B* <b*@mchsi.com>**

And while we're at it, let's find out how much water and chemicals (I'd love
to think it was organic, but that's a pipe-dream for a future
administration) are used on the White House gardens. With a $3 trillion
plus budget, every penny that could be saved.......Go for edible
landscaping,  low maintenance, and native plants.  Just think how many
people that garden could feed!!

Cheers, 
Cathy

Cathy Wilkinson Barash
Freelance writer, photographer, editor
Author of Edible Flowers from Garden to Palate, Evening Gardens
753 17th Street
Des Moines IA 50314
Phone; 515-282-5172
Fax: 515-243-5353
Email  bloominggourmet@mchsi.com

Message-ID: <20080205175051.5E429BA31@thinkhost.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"

Here are some more of my thoughts which I wrote for another garden writer
but which address Rose Marie's question of "who'd take this on?"

----

I think there's a lot of symbolic power in the White House as "America's
House".  We choose who lives there and how long.  We pay the bills
associated with the house, including the salaries of the 8 gardeners who
maintain the 18 acres of grounds.  It is only logical that we should have a
say in what our house looks like and what messages it sends.

All four of the main candidates are running on a "change" platform.  "Vote
for me to bring change to White House," they say.  I recognize that
"changing the lawn" by replacing part of it with edible gardens is probably
not what most people have in mind, but it would send a number of messages,
all of them positive.  At a time when America is in the grips of an obesity
epidemic and the world is struggling with climate change, it would send a
message that fresh fruits and vegetables produced close to home are good and
healthy things.  

All candidates are saying that they're the best person to reach out to
independents and across the aisle to the other party.  Gardens already do
that.  Productive home gardens are not conservative, liberal, democratic,
republican, red, white, blue, black, Latino, male or female.  They cut
across all lines.  They even cut across national borders.

So what's standing in the way of change?  I suspect the biggest argument
against would be "tradition" : i.e. we can't plant a kitchen garden at the
White House because it would involve tampering with a landscape of
historical significance. In digging a little deeper in our history books,
most people would be surprised to learn that planting edible gardens would
not involve breaking traditions so much as returning to them.  In 1800, John
Adams was the first president to occupy the White House in 1800 and one of
his first additions was a vegetable garden.  It was 25 years later, in 1825,
that John Quincy Adams developed the first flower garden on the White House
grounds and planted ornamental trees.  So, if there's a gardening tradition
that's less well-rooted, it's that one.  I don't know which President did
away with the fruit and vegetables or why, but I know a garden historian who
would.  

For me, promoting home gardens - at the highest of levels - is the
responsible thing to do.  Last August, the Guardian reported that more food
will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been
during the past 10,000 years combined in order to keep up with population
growth which is projected to hit 9 billion by 2050.  That will involve some
radical new thinking about what food is, where it comes from, and who
produces it.  

I recognize that I'm partially the product of Maine's unusually-strong
gardening culture (one relatively small state with several nationally-known
garden writers and seed companies).  We've even got our First Lady, Karen
Baldacci, on board. Among her first acts as First Lady was to plant a
kitchen garden and set up a greenhouse at the Governor's Mansion, Maine's
answer to the White House.  If it can happen at the state level, surely it
can happen nationally.

> From: <gardenwriters-request@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Reply-To: <gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:31:42 -0500
> To: <gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: gardenwriters Digest, Vol 61, Issue 6
> 
> Message-ID: <20080205175051.5E429BA31@thinkhost.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> Here are some more of my thoughts which I wrote for another garden writer
> but which address Rose Marie's question of "who'd take this on?"
> 
> ----
> 
> I think there's a lot of symbolic power in the White House as "America's
> House".  We choose who lives there and how long.  We pay the bills
> associated with the house, including the salaries of the 8 gardeners who
> maintain the 18 acres of grounds.  It is only logical that we should have a
> say in what our house looks like and what messages it sends.
> 
> All four of the main candidates are running on a "change" platform.  "Vote
> for me to bring change to White House," they say.  I recognize that
> "changing the lawn" by replacing part of it with edible gardens is probably
> not what most people have in mind, but it would send a number of messages,
> all of them positive.  At a time when America is in the grips of an obesity
> epidemic and the world is struggling with climate change, it would send a
> message that fresh fruits and vegetables produced close to home are good and
> healthy things.  
> 
> All candidates are saying that they're the best person to reach out to
> independents and across the aisle to the other party.  Gardens already do
> that.  Productive home gardens are not conservative, liberal, democratic,
> republican, red, white, blue, black, Latino, male or female.  They cut
> across all lines.  They even cut across national borders.
>  
> 
> So what's standing in the way of change?  I suspect the biggest argument
> against would be "tradition" : i.e. we can't plant a kitchen garden at the
> White House because it would involve tampering with a landscape of
> historical significance. In digging a little deeper in our history books,
> most people would be surprised to learn that planting edible gardens would
> not involve breaking traditions so much as returning to them.  In 1800, John
> Adams was the first president to occupy the White House in 1800 and one of
> his first additions was a vegetable garden.  It was 25 years later, in 1825,
> that John Quincy Adams developed the first flower garden on the White House
> grounds and planted ornamental trees.  So, if there's a gardening tradition
> that's less well-rooted, it's that one.  I don't know which President did
> away with the fruit and vegetables or why, but I know a garden historian who
> would.  
> 
> For me, promoting home gardens - at the highest of levels - is the
> responsible thing to do.  Last August, the Guardian reported that more food
> will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been
> during the past 10,000 years combined in order to keep up with population
> growth which is projected to hit 9 billion by 2050.  That will involve some
> radical new thinking about what food is, where it comes from, and who
> produces it.  
> 
> I recognize that I'm partially the product of Maine's unusually-strong
> gardening culture (one relatively small state with several nationally-known
> garden writers and seed companies).  We've even got our First Lady, Karen
> Baldacci, on board. Among her first acts as First Lady was to plant a
> kitchen garden and set up a greenhouse at the Governor's Mansion, Maine's
> answer to the White House.  If it can happen at the state level, surely it
> can happen nationally.  

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