Montalto is the high peak above Thomas Jefferson's little mountain of Monticello. From this lofty perch you can see Jefferson's life shaped in the land. Far to the right, in the valley, there's the third president's boyhood home, Shadwell.

As you gaze on Monticello itself, 400 feet below and almost a mile distant, you observe the brick Palladian villa. This is not the predominant element. That prize goes to the vegetable garden, a 1,000-foot-long terrace, 80 feet wide, suggesting Noah's ark perched post-flood on Mount Ararat.

Home vegetable gardening is trendy again and got a huge boost last month when Michelle Obama led a crew of fifth-graders in breaking ground on a White House plot on the South Lawn. The President's House, as Jefferson knew it when he was the occupant, was too raw and muddy for serious gardening in the first decade of the 19th century.

Instead, he arranged the construction of his vegetable garden above Charlottesville so that it would be ready for his long and fertile retirement.

"The notion of gardening as a food source, as recreation and as salvation for the future are all legacies we can learn from Thomas Jefferson," says Peter Hatch, director of gardens and grounds at since 1977. Hatch, a lyrical scholar of Jefferson the gardener, sees a figure who would be heartily embraced by the food activists who pressured the Obamas to plant a garden.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040302181_pf.html

meanwhile .....

Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of the South Lawn on Friday to plant a vegetable garden, the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets - the president does not like them - but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family's meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern.

"My hope," the first lady said in an interview in her East Wing office, "is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities."

Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington will help her dig up the soil for the 1,100-square-foot plot, in a spot visible to passers-by on E Street. (It is just below the Obama girls' swing set.)

Students from the school, which has had a garden since 2001, will also help plant, harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs. Virtually the entire Obama family, including the president, will pull weeds, "whether they like it or not," Mrs. Obama said with a laugh. "Now Grandma, my mom, I don't know." Her mother, she said, will probably sit back and say: "Isn't that lovely. You missed a spot."

Whether there would be a White House garden had become more than a matter of landscaping. The question had taken on political and environmental symbolism, with the Obamas lobbied for months by advocates who believe that growing more food locally, and organically, can lead to more healthful eating and reduce reliance on huge industrial farms that use more oil for transportation and chemicals for fertilizer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

-----------------

Gus: Good on the president. I wish his lettuces the best of growth. Perhaps Rudd should encourage the lawns of parliament house in Canberra to be turned into organic farmyards for beetroots...