Going Mainstream With the Obama Vegetable Garden

I’m a cynic when it comes to The New York Times and its reporting on culture, trends, dining, and style. Though I’m a fan of what is now seemingly one of the few print newspapers left in the world, normally, by the time it reports on, for example, a breakthrough “underground” album, that album is no longer breakthrough and it’s certainly no longer underground. The inescapable truth of the mainstream media is that it reports on and is viewed by, well, the mainstream—and not the underground.

So when I read in The Times that group of fifth graders from a DC elementary school will help Michelle Obama dig up the soil for a planned 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden, my cynicism goes out the window and all I can think is “How cool is this?” If The Times is reporting on this, perhaps community gardening is becoming mainstream!

It’s sad that that’s still my reaction, particularly since, for years, I’ve reported on, and been involved in local food initiatives. There is still a Gee Whiz quality to the Slow Food movement that is foreign to some, as well as somewhat of an “I-drive-a-hybrid” righteousness, which only turns people on the outside off.

So to see the Obamas, who are, if anything, gifted in their groundedness, doing some good ol’ hippie gardening, maybe more people in the cities and ‘burbiest of ‘burbs with a big backyard will do the same, and it won’t be perceived as weird or “earthy.”

Organic gardening and community gardens are nothing new, but they are anything but mainstream in a world of Costco, Sam’s Club, and in an age when everything is in season—always, because it’s shipped in from who-knows-where. You know the workman’s adage that “it’s five o’ clock somewhere”? Same applies with seasons in the food industry.

Our, at least my, previous generalized notion of the White House and its occupants is so standard, buttoned-up, inside-the-Beltway Box, that thinking of Mrs. Obama, the president, their kids, and a group of nearby public schoolers getting their hands dirty as they plant cilantro, chard, and berries, is just wonderful. There’s really no other way to describe it.

Aside from community gardens that have served as glue for neighborhoods, providing much of the same sense of community as a place of worship does, around the country, countless public school districts are engaging their own community gardening projects, not only to instill a sense of agrarian savvy into youths who would otherwise never be exposed to that, but to also underscore the importance of knowing the source of your food.

There are too many programs to name in one Rooflines post, but what are some projects in your area? Let’s hear about them.

This piece originally ran March 20, 2009 on my blog at Rooflines, the blog of the National Housing Institute.