A White House garden that produces more than vegetables

The garden is planted; the seeds are stirring in freshly turned soil. Soon they will send shoots into a world yearning for growth and renewal.

Victory Gardens, those relics that Eleanor Roosevelt helped popularize during World War II, are chic again. Thank the Obama White House and a pair of whimsical 20-somethings who practice something they call "nudge politics."

Who would have thought that in an age when computers are called Apples and farming has become a distant agribusiness, an old, earthy symbol of self-reliance would grow with such sudden fervor?

Long live seeds.

There are already an estimated 18,000 community gardens around the country, and there is evidence that public and private plots are expanding everywhere. Pardon the pun, but seeds are a rare growth industry during this recession. Sales are booming.
The American Seed Trade Association's Gretchen Flanley said vegetable seed sales are up 20-40% this year after declining over the previous 20.

"We're kind of excited," she said. "We hope it sticks."

This gardening renaissance comes at the crossroads of several trends: tight family food budgets, an environmental movement focused on modestly practical things one person can do, and food safety scares on everything from meat to nuts.

The back-to-the-earth movement has gotten the ultimate PR push. First lady Michelle Obama has planted the world's most famous new garden on the White House grounds.

Organic garden activists Daniel Bowman Simon and Casey Gustowarow pushed a new Victory Garden while traveling 11,000 miles around the country last year in a school bus with a garden on the roof they named "Topsy Turvy." Their White House Organic Farm Project gathered more than 10,000 signatures urging the next occupants of the White House to lead by example in growing a garden.

Michelle Obama's White House garden symbolizes much more than dreams of a few plump tomatoes or juicy snap peas.

"With the exception of collecting compost from the Supreme Court and the Capitol building, it pretty much has met all of our expectations," joked Simon, 28.

Last week, Mrs. Obama helped an army of grade schoolers plant lettuce, herbs, onions, cucumbers, peppers and peas, with tomatoes to follow. She told the students from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington that when she accompanied President Obama to Europe and Asia earlier this month, the first thing everyone asked about was the freshly turned dirt on the White House lawn.

From Prince Charles on down, Mrs. Obama said, "They were all excited about this garden."

Apparently, Americans are excited about gardens in their neighborhoods, too.

Burpee, the Pennsylvania-based pioneer in the seed catalog industry, reports that business in seeds and transplants was up 30% over last March, and that organic seed sales were up 46% in January from a year earlier.

One of its new products — the Money Garden — is a $9.95 packet of six basic vegetables. It's aimed at first-time gardeners and folks who haven't turned a shovel in years, and it's selling well, said Burpee spokeswoman Kristin Grilli. South Carolina-based Park Seeds sells a similar Victory Garden packet.

Burpee commissioned a study last year that said that $50 in seeds and fertilizer in a garden can produce $1,200 in fresh produce, depending on weather, insects and disease.

Burpee Chairman and CEO George Ball said the Obamas are setting "a superb example for our country's citizens and particularly for America's children."

"Gardens inspire the kind of optimism the American public is craving right now," Ball said.

Simon, a soft-spoken Peace Corps veteran, plans to work on a Connecticut garden this summer. He was excited to learn that some of the seeds planted at the White House descended from plants cultivated by Thomas Jefferson, who saw himself as a farmer first and viewed an agrarian society as the bulwark of any democracy.

Simon also was encouraged by the success of what he called purposely non-confrontational politics.

He and Gustowarow operated on "the whole nudge theory of change," Simon said.

"If you give people suggestions of what to do, they just might change their behavior," he said. "You make it easier to do what you ultimately want to happen, without legislation. So it is a great nudge case study there at the White House now. Michelle Obama is being the change that she wants to see."