Here's some news worth celebrating:
In another sign that the Department of Agriculture is embracing sustainable food, the agency today will unveil expanded plans for a People's Garden that will include the entire six-acre grounds of the Whitten Building, the department's neoclassic marble headquarters on the Mall.The plans, to be announced at the agency's Earth Day celebrations, include a 1,300-square-foot organic vegetable garden -- slightly larger than the one at the White House -- as well as ornamental flower gardens and bioswales, or mini-wetlands designed to reduce pollution and surface water runoff. The building grounds now are landscaped with grass, flower borders and trees planted to honor a person or mark an event...In March, [Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack] convened a one-day meeting in Washington at which 47 gardening and horticulture organizations, including the Rodale Institute, Seed Savers and the American Community Gardeners Association, offered feedback on the project and brainstormed ways to spread the message to schools, churches and communities.
"I kept having to pinch myself in this meeting," said Rose Hayden-Smith, a historian and food systems educator at the University of California. "We're not the kind of people who have been invited to Washington, D.C., before. We're the guerrilla gardeners, the pollinator people, the seed savers. It wasn't our usual cast of characters. People were grinning from ear to ear."
Source: WashingtonPost.com
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