Agriculture Department seeds the way for ‘people’s gardens’

Livia Marques, L, the director of the People’s Garden Initiative and her son Levon Cooper, 8, plant as USDA employees volunteer in the “People’s Garden”, an organic garden on the grounds of the USDA HQ building on April 9, 2010, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

USDA People’s Gardens

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post
April 13, 2010

Excerpt:

Most days, Ed Murtagh spends hours behind his desk in Suite 1028 of the south building at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, trying to figure out how to conserve energy, reduce waste and make other environmental improvements.

But starting this month, Murtagh will regularly get up from his desk, walk outside and literally make the department greener.
Murtagh is among 80 volunteers at the USDA who are lending their sweat and muscle to an organic garden created by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack along the Mall, on the grounds of the agency’s headquarters at 14th Street and Independence Avenue SW.

Vilsack carved out the garden last year from an asphalt parking lot. He grabbed a jackhammer and challenged USDA facilities across the country to follow suit and create what he calls a People’s Garden.

As of last week, 255 gardens have been established by Agriculture Department workers worldwide, including an indoor lettuce garden in North Carolina and a vegetable garden on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in South Korea. All of the food grown at these gardens — 29,656 pounds last year — is donated to food pantries and soup kitchens. The garden at USDA headquarters last year yielded more than 300 pounds of peas, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and other produce, which was given to D.C. Central Kitchen.

During its debut, the garden was tended by the Agriculture Department’s landscape firm, two college interns and an ad hoc group of USDA employees.

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