[Pollinator] Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden

Mon Mar 30 09:10:21 PDT 2009

It is good to know that the Obamas will start a vegetable
garden on the White House grounds. It is also good to know that they have two
bee hives, but honeybees will not pollinate their tomatoes, peppers, etc. They
need some native pollinators too. They could attract native pollinators by adding
the perfect complement to a vegetable garden, a pollinator lawn.

Sam Droege argued in a recent e-mail the advantages of
pollinator lawns, allowing wildflowers among the blades of grass. At present
most broad leaf plants found in lawns everywhere are introduced species, such
as dandelions, clover and ground ivy; but pollinators seem to benefit from
them, so perhaps they are better than perfectly manicured lawns with no
flowering plants at all. Sam hoped that somebody would come up with a seed mix for
pollinator lawns. If the White House took the initiative to start a pollinator
lawn this may be an incentive for lawn experts to start experimenting with the
best seed mixes.

In the meantime the basic strategy for a pollinator friendly
lawn could include:

Less
     or no pesticides and herbicides.

Allowing
     small wildflowers among the blades of grass. 

Providing
     housing for pollinators. A few bare spots would be helpful but sand pits
     and/or sand piles for ground nesters plus a few bee houses would be
     excellent.

So, let us start a campaign requesting that the White House
lawn become th
e First Pollinator Lawn.

Beatriz Moisset

-----Original Message-----
From: Ladadams at aol.com
To: pollinator at nappc.org
Sent: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:33 pm
Subject: [Pollinator] Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden

Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden 

By MARIAN BURROS

Published: March 19, 2009 

WASHINGTON — On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White 
House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. 
There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make 
the cut.

Skip to next paragraph 

Enlarge This Image

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Sam Kass, left, an assistant White House chef, and Dale Haney, 
superintendent of the White House Grounds, at the site of a new vegetable garden 
on the South Lawn. 

Multimedia

Map 

Local Food, From the South Lawn 

Enlarge This Image

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

>From left, Cristeta Comerford, Sam Kass and Bill Yosses in the 
White House kitchen. 

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and 
formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate 
children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when 
obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in 
her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through 
children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, 
begin to educate our communities.”

Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington will 
help her dig up the soil for the 1,100-square-foot plot in a spot visible to 
passers-by on E Street. (It’s just below the Obama girls’ swing set.) Students 
from the school, which has had a garden since 2001, will also help plant, 
harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs. 

Almost the entire Obama family, including the president, will pull weeds, 
“whether they like it or not,” Mrs. Obama said laughing. “Now Grandma, my mom, I 
don’t know.” Her mother, she said, would probably sit back and say: “Isn’t that 
lovely. You missed a spot.”

Whether there would be a White House garden has been more than a matter of 
landscaping. It’s taken on political and environmental symbolism as the Obamas 
have been lobbied for months by advocates who believe that growing more food 
locally could lead to healthier eating and lessen reliance on huge industrial 
farms that use more oil for transportation and chemicals for fertilizer.

In the meantime, promoting healthful eating has become an important part of 
Mrs. Obama’s agenda. 

“The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful 
message about eating healthy and more delicious 
food,” said Dan Barber, an owner 
of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., an organic restaurant that 
grows many of its own ingredients. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could 
translate into real change.”

The Clintons grew some vegetables in pots on the roof of the White House. But 
the Obamas’ garden will have 55 varieties of vegetables — from a wish list of 
the kitchen staff — grown from organic seedlings started at the executive 
mansion’s greenhouses.

The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatilloes 
and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, 
red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. 
For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more 
unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter who 
is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey.

Total cost for the seeds, mulch, etc., is $200.

The plots will be in raised beds fertilized with White House compost, crab 
meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand. Ladybugs and praying mantises 
will help control harmful bugs. 

Cristeta Comerford, the White House’s executive chef, is eager to plan menus 
around the garden, and Bill Yosses, the pastry chef, is looking forward to berry 
season.

Sam Kass, an assistant White House chef who prepared healthful meals for the 
Obama=2
0family in Chicago and is an advocate of local food, will oversee the garden. The White House 
grounds crew and kitchen staff will do most of the work, but other White House 
staff members have volunteered. 

“First of all,” Mrs. Obama said, “there’s nothing really cooler than coming 
to the White House and harvesting some of the vegetables and being in the 
kitchen with Cris and Sam and Bill, and cutting and cooking and actually 
experiencing the joys of your work.”

Mrs. Obama, who said that she never had a vegetable garden before, said the 
idea for it came from her experiences as a working mother trying to feed her 
daughters, Malia and Sasha, a good diet. Eating out three times a week, 
ordering a pizza, having a sandwich for dinner took it’s toll. The children’s 
pediatrician told her she needed to be thinking about nutrition. 

“He raised a flag for us,” she said, and within months the children lost 
weight. 

For children, she said, food is all about taste, and fresh and local taste 
better. 

“A real delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things that you’ll 
ever eat,” she said. “And my children know the difference, and that’s how I’ve 
been able to get them to try different things.

“I wanted to be able to bring what I learned to a broader base of people. And 
what better way to do it than to plant a vegetable garden in the S
outh Lawn of 
the White House.” 

The country’s one million community gardens, she said, can also play an 
important role for urban dwellers who have no backyards.

But, sitting in her office in the East Wing, Mrs. Obama stressed that she 
doesn’t want people to feel guilty if they don’t have the time to have a garden: 
there are still many small changes they can make. 

“You can begin in your own cupboard by eliminating processed food, trying to 
cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and 
vegetables,” she said.

0

Laurie Davies Adams
Executive 
Director
Pollinator Partnership 
423 Washington Street, 5th 
floor
San Francisco, CA 
94111
415-362-1137
LDA at pollinator.org

www.pollinator.org
www.nappc.org

National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2009. 
Beecome 
involved at www.pollinator.org

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