Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were all keen gardeners, and cows grazed round the White House building site. The message then was sturdy self-reliance, and in Jefferson's case, progress through science, in the form of genetic modification through plant breeding.
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Washington and Jefferson did not of course plant, muck and weed their lettuces personally, as the Obamas plan to do. Plantation-owners had slaves for that. So Michelle's garden is part of a reclamation by the slaves' descendants of the entire polity, of which the garden is an ancient if conservative image. (Enclosed Scottish estates are actually called policies.)
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There's an even older echo. Plantation slaves kept their own gardens to feed themselves.
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So the White House kitchen garden marks a full stop at the end of a long line of gardens of slaves and gerdens tended by slaves. Eleanor Roosevelt launched victory gardens. Michelle's is a liberation garden.
02 April 2009
Garden
James Wimberley at The Reality-Based Community offers yet more reasons why the new White House garden is awesome.
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When I first read about Michele Obama's garden at the White House, I thought back to your father and my father planting a plot at 2D University Houses. You were only 3 at the time but perhaps you remember it. One of your father's proudest moments was when some Japanese gardeners praised him for his weed-free plantings! But surely you remember the "back" backyard on Redwood and the side of the house vegetable garden on Orville Street.
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