A push for gardens of eatin'

Invoking the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt's victory gardens of the 1940s, Mayor John Hickenlooper did his part to encourage local vegetable gardens Thursday by declaring May 14 "Grow Local" Day in Denver.

The mayor — who said his mother grew and froze much of their food, and even rinsed off Saran wrap for reuse — joined the "Grow Local" initiative of gardeners and community activists who hope to sprout 2,009 new gardens in the metro area this year.

"We're encouraging edible landscaping, a multifunctional (design) that really is beautiful," said Ellen Rosenthal, director of the Living Earth Center, which teaches gardening. "Homegrown food is cheaper, tastes better, (is) more nutritious and is good exercise."

Among the new gardens she hopes to establish is one for vegetables at Civic Center. She said the garden should be planted in the next two weeks.

The Denver Botanic Gardens, Mile High Business Alliance and Transition Denver, a nonprofit pushing for sustainable living within a community, are joining in the venture.

Rosenthal says less than 2 percent of the food consumed in Denver is grown here. She's trained in permaculture, the study of self-sustaining ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and swamps. She wants to adapt for human communities ideas from those natural systems.

As first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt planted the first vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House in 1943. Twenty million Americans followed her lead by growing such gardens. At the height of their popularity toward the end of World War II, victory gardens supplied about 40 percent of the food consumed in America, according to Rosenthal.

Former Denver Mayor Ben Stapleton dedicated the city's first victory garden on March 28, 1943, at East Eighth Avenue and Elizabeth Street, now Congress Park. By 1944, Denverites planted more than 50,000 victory gardens, Rosenthal said.