[Ccpg] Department of Agriculture People's Organic Garden coming to the DC Mall

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

For Vilsack, the Proof Is in the Planting

By Jane Black
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

In another sign that the Department of Agriculture is embracing sustainable
food, the agency today will unveil expanded plans for a People's Garden that
will include the entire six-acre grounds of the Whitten Building, the
department's neoclassic marble headquarters on the Mall.

The plans, to be announced at the agency's Earth Day celebrations, include a
1,300-square-foot organic vegetable garden -- slightly larger than the one
at the White House -- as well as ornamental flower gardens and bioswales, or
mini-wetlands designed to reduce pollution and surface water runoff. The
building grounds now are landscaped with grass, flower borders and trees
planted to honor a person or mark an event.

Secretary Tom Vilsack, an avid runner, came up with the idea for the garden
during one of his daily runs around the Mall. He noticed tourists stopping
to look at the trees and their dedication plaques. A thriving garden, he
thought, would be a better way to communicate the agency's mission of
sustainability and in particular the importance of fresh fruits and
vegetables, a cornerstone of the agency's push to improve school nutrition
and reduce childhood obesity.

Initial plans were announced at a groundbreaking in February on Abraham
Lincoln's birthday. Lincoln founded the Department of Agriculture in 1862
and referred to it as the People's Department, hence the name People's
Garden.

Originally, Vilsack, 58, envisioned a vegetable garden only half the size
and a goal to have at least some type of garden -- even if just a window box
-- at every USDA facility. But in an interview last week at his office,
which overlooks the scrubby lawn, Vilsack said the positive public response
to the idea and a March meeting with horticulture and garden groups
persuaded him to broaden the plan. The garden now will encompass all of the
agency's property on the Mall, and the department will work with
organizations across the country to encourage individuals, schools and
communities to establish gardens.

"If we can get people to focus on fruits and vegetables and more healthy
foods, we'll be better in terms of our health-care situation," Vilsack said.
Exposing visitors to model ecosystems, such as the bioswales, is also
"important as we transition to a discussion about climate change and green
jobs and all the issues involved in the environment."

The organic vegetable garden will feature a rotation of crops, beginning
with cool-weather plants such as field peas, lettuce, spinach and kale. As
summer approaches, tomatoes, peppers, squash and herbs, among other things,
will be planted. [People's
<http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/foodanddining/graphics
/peoples_garden.pdf>  Garden Concept Plan Drawing (PDF)]

There will also be a three sisters garden, a traditional Native American
planting method in which corn, pole beans and squash are grown together. The
beans fix nitrogen, a fertilizer, in the soil and use the cornstalks as
natural poles to climb. Squash has big leaves that shade the soil, keeping
it moist and cutting out light that would allow weeds to grow. The chairman
of the Cheyenne River Sioux of South Dakota will participate in a planting
ceremony and exchange seeds with USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan at
the Earth Day event.

All of the vegetables produced will be donated to a local food bank. But the
garden's primary role is to be an educational tool. Gardeners will work
toward winning it organic certification; signs and possibly a video at the
USDA visitors' center will explain the process and benefits of organic
agriculture. The vegetables will be grown in three ways: in the ground (the
soil has been tested several times and contains no chemical residues), in
raised beds and in containers. The goal is to illustrate the many ways to
grow food, dispelling the notion that gardeners need large plots of land.

The emphasis on gardening might surprise some sustainable-agriculture
advocates who initially greeted Vilsack's appointment with skepticism. A
former governor of Iowa, Vilsack had close ties to conventional farmers and
ranchers and had supported biotechnology and ethanol. But in his first 91
days, the secretary has made concerted efforts to win food advocates' trust.
He has met with progressive farm groups and food policy organizations and
watched a screening of "Food Inc.," a searing indictment of the industrial
food system, with authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, two leaders of
the sustainable-food movement. One of Vilsack's standard lines is, "If I had
to summarize the vision I have for this department in one word, it would be
'sustainable.' "

The new garden has provided another chance to include new voices, Vilsack
said. In March, he convened a one-day meeting in Washington at which 47
gardening and horticulture organizations, including the Rodale Institute,
Seed Savers and the American Community Gardeners Association, offered
feedback on the project and brainstormed ways to spread the message to
schools, churches and communities.

"I kept having to pinch myself in this meeting," said Rose Hayden-Smith, a
historian and food systems educator at the University of California. "We're
not the kind of people who have been invited to Washington, D.C., before.
We're the guerrilla gardeners, the pollinator people, the seed savers. It
wasn't our usual cast of characters. People were grinning from ear to ear."

This is not the first time the federal government has encouraged Americans
to get out into their gardens. During World War I, the Department of the
Interior launched a Liberty Garden program, and the Federal Bureau of
Education established the United States School Garden Army, an unprecedented
governmental effort to make agricultural education a formal part of the
public school curriculum.

Days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Secretary of Agriculture
Claude Wickard convened a National War Garden Commission to promote home and
community gardens, later renamed victory gardens. By 1943, the year Eleanor
Roosevelt planted her garden at the White House, 40 percent of fresh fruits
and vegetables consumed in the United States were produced in victory
gardens.

Over the past 50 years, the USDA has continued to support gardening through,
for example, the master gardener program. But those efforts have been
distinctly low-profile.

Vilsack said the struggling economy, concerns about climate change and
rising obesity rates mean the time is right for that to change. But it's
also clear that Vilsack's exposure to sustainable-food advocates and ideas
has turned him into a bit of a foodie himself. "I don't care what anybody
says: Nothing is better than a tomato you grow," he said. "There's something
about it that's different than a tomato you can buy. It's a great thing."

The People's Garden at the Whitten Building will be tended by workers from
Melwood, an Upper Marlboro-based nonprofit organization that employs
developmentally disabled adults. But as at the new White House garden, the
department's staff will be encouraged and permitted to help.

Will the secretary himself pitch in? "You know, I'm happy to work in the
garden. But someone will have to tell me what to do," he said. "If someone
tells me, 'This is a weed, you've got to pull it,' I'll pull it."



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