Produce to the People

Here on Tonic, we've written about gardens in pick-up trucks, gardens on window sills and gardens in shoe racks. Now, it's a garden on the top of a building. Is there nowhere people aren't growing food nowadays?

As it turns out, Michelle Obama isn't the only one gardening in the nation's capital. The USDA is also getting in on the action with a rooftop "People's Garden" that will teach the public about native plants and sustainability.

With a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 30, the garden perched atop the offices of USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS, at 1800 M Street, NW) joined the USDA's wider People's Garden Initiative, which will create community gardens at the agency's locations around the country and the world.

"GardenERS," as the new plot is called, is the first in the initiative to be planted atop a non-USDA building. (As someone who used to work in that same building, coincidentally, I can tell you that the neighborhood where all this growing will go on is wall-to-wall urban concrete, the last place you'd expect to find a garden. All the better!)

The flagship garden of the initiative is at USDA headquarters, the entire grounds of which is now designated as "the nation's demonstration plot." The garden will display the small efforts that can make a difference in reducing global warming and increasing our sustainable food supply.

With our government doing agricultural education and so much gardening going on in all sorts of spots, I'm wondering what will be next. A hat with a garden on top? (Lending a whole new meaning to the phrase "bring your lunch.") A garden on a boat? (With the fertilizer, redefining "poop deck.") Or maybe the answer is a garden on a garden on a garden, otherwise known as a "vertical farm." Today, gardening the rooftop; tomorrow, turnips and cabbages on every floor.

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng