What’s the Obama administration doing about gardening?

By PHIL BEATTY

Well, we lived through another presidential inauguration last week and it seems everything I watched or read had something to do with it. I was thinking about how the inauguration impacted with gardening when sure enough I read a newspaper article about how an organic gardener and food activist named Roger Doiron from Scarborough, Maine, has started a campaign to pressure President Barack Obama to grow veggies on the Whitehouse grounds. A sort of victory garden. The garden would not only provide food for the first family but all excess would go to the local food bank.

Victory gardens were popular in World War I when citizens were encouraged to plant gardens to free up labor for the military. Doiron argues that if Americans planted wartime victory gardens again, we would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable agricultural practices, feed our families with cheaper, more nutritious food and reduce obesity and disease. Sounds like the new administration would be setting a good example.

Eleanor Roosevelt installed a victory garden in 1943, and Woodrow Wilson turned the South Lawn over to grazing sheep during World War I, but most of the landscape changes made by first families were for their own needs. Obama reportedly wants to install a basketball court. Bill Clinton had a jogging track constructed, Gerald Ford installed an outdoor swimming pool and Dwight Eisenhower installed a putting green. Jimmy Carter asked for a culinary herbs garden which continues to be planted among ornamentals. Since the Clinton administration, the executive chef has been harvesting produce from a small vegetable garden on the roof.

The last president to take an active role in the landscape was John Kennedy. After he read Thomas Jefferson’s chronicle of planting at Monticello, the “Garden Book,” Kennedy asked that Woodrow Wilsons’ original Rose Garden be reworked.

I believe this is a noble effort but I question if the White House adopts this garden strategy, will it really make a difference in our city? There are a lot of gardeners in McAlester all ready. But really, will Americans opt for the convenience of a dollar deal at a fast food joint over the economical and healthy practice of growing their own vegetables?

You know, back in the day of the Victory Gardens there was no Taco Bell or McDonald’s fast food, so if you wanted cheap food, you had to grow it.

Do you think a White House garden will prompt a change in our society, or do we have to wait for the next generation of adults to see the influence at work? It’s easy to ask someone else to make a change in their home, (especially when there is full time staff available to tend to the plot), but what about the everyday family that is working overtime and managing the lives of their children? I have my doubts.

In my view, the reality is that weeding, feeding, staking, pest control, mulching, and watering all takes time and a commitment. I wish it were, but gardening is not for everyone. It would take desperate circumstances to see the number of Victory Gardeners that we had in the past. I am nostalgic when I think of Victory Gardens. I guess the OETA program titled “Victory Garden” has made me think about how the world might be if we all had and tended family gardens. I miss Roger Swain. He was the previous host in the red suspenders who encouraged us to plant victory gardens. Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t have enough time to tend to their own gardens, or they don’t want to. Edible gardens are a joy, but I wouldn’t consider them to be “low maintenance.

Maybe we should start at a local level. I’m going to contact Senator Richard Lerblance, State Representative Brian Renegar, and State Representative Terry Harrison. They’re all loyal Democrats and probably avid gardeners. They could lead the charge and convince President Obama to join our effort. This is all good food for thought.

Phil Beatty is a special correspondent for the McAlester News-Capital. Contact him at phil_beatty@yahoo.com if you have any comments.

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