Michelle Obama to grow veg on the White House lawn

This is a story to put a smile on the face of anyone convinced that growing and eating our own organic produce should, perhaps, take precedence, even, over the front lawn. Michelle Obama isn’t thinking about this. She’s not weighing the pros and cons of a petition urging her to do this. She’s not allowing some local grower to plant some potatoes in a corner. She’s doing it herself with the help of some local school children.

According to sources the First Lady has drawn up a list of some 55 verieties of fruit and veg in consultation with the kitchen staff. The produce will go towards feeding the White House and state functions as well as being distributed to ‘Miriam’s Kitchen’ which serves the homeless in Washington.

She is also involving local students who’ll be involved with her from the planning to the harvest.

The plot will be 1,100 square feet of the south lawn of the White House. In the lower left corner of the photo above. This is a bit outside of permaculture’s zone 1 which suggests you grow most of your regularly picked veg as close to the kitchen as possible but the garden will be in view of the path running past the White House so if it can influence others to take the idea of edible front gardens on then that’s okay ... If you’d like to see their garden layout and grown plan click here.

Another reason this excites us at EarthAbbey is that it is an idea very much in harmony with our own Grow Zones project – where EarthAbbey groups form to help each other turn their own gardens over to fruit and veg. We will put more about Grow Zones up on the blog very soon but we’ve already started in Bristol and I think collectively we’ve an even bigger space available to grow on.

I’m not sure anyone has been brave enough to turn their front gardens over to veg yet. Perhaps following in the First Lady’s wellies steps will help.

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