Secretary Vilsack prepared a message this month describing the purpose and mission of the Peoples' Garden at USDA headquarters in Washington, DC.
Here's the first part of the message. Check it out, and be sure to visit the Peoples' Garden web page and Twitter feed.
From: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
Re: The Peoples' Garden
July 2009
What was the idea behind the people’s garden? Well, we wanted to take an opportunity to showcase what we do at USDA, and to encourage folks to consider local production and local consumption. We felt that this was an opportunity to provide an example to the rest of the country.
There are a lot of people who walk this mall from all over the country, and we thought if we had a statement garden that we would begin to get peoples attention about this, but we wanted to also encourage other USDA offices to follow suit. And we felt that if we could create these people’s gardens then it would allow us to better connect people with where their food comes from. Allow young people in particular to understand how hard it is to produce food and how much fun it is to produce food. And we believed that as these local production opportunities were created young people in particular would not only learn the lessons of hard work, but more importantly would be encouraged to be more nutritious eaters. So there are lots of reasons for the people’s garden, and we’re encouraged by the response...
Read the rest of the Secretary's Peoples' Garden message here, or visit the Peoples' Garden web page to learn more and see what's happening in the garden.