While the Obama family White House lawn-turned-vegetable-patch is generating excitement and debate, the grow-your-own idea is not new. In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged a return to the 'victory gardens' that had become popular during the First World War when the United States faced dramatic food shortages. Mrs Roosevelt planted a vegetable garden at the White House and some 20 million Americans followed her lead. By the end of the war, 40% of the nation's vegetables were grown by home-gardeners. Today we call them Recession Gardens and they are sprouting up all over the US and becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

 

More than a practical symbol of frugality and self-sufficiency, the Recession Garden offers the NoJobSurvivor a steady supply of healthy food while reducing the carbon-footprint.  Plus, turning your lawn into a garden can be a valuable family (and community) project bringing people together during these tough times.

Architect Fritz Haeg states that the White House Vegetable Garden is a "symbol of what is wrong with our lawns and how we can fix them."

"Since the late 1940s the sterile industrial landscape of the lawn has come to dominate our streets. This divisive and repressive aesthetic has been sold to us as the only acceptable surface to present to our neighbors. But our ideas of beauty are always shifting, and soon the front lawn will be considered an ugly vestige of an ignorant time. Why did they water, weed, mow, fertilize and pollute for a ceremonial space they never even used? With the Obamas giving us an organic vegetable garden to look at, we are taking steps toward a more thoughtful, beautiful, healthy and productive landscape."

Check out what is available at your local gardening store or hardware shop. Ask for advice on garden growing space, organic practices and seasonal vegetable availability; your former lawn's potential may surprise you.

 

No Job Loafing! - NoJob Survivor Food