One of the most unexpected and wonderful benefits of starting a blog about gardening is meeting amazing people who help make the world a better place by growing food. A few weeks ago a gardener in my neighborhood, Marguerite, contacted me. She and her 10 year old twin boys decided they wanted to start a vegetable garden. But instead of sticking it in their backyard, they chose to transform the strip of grass and weeds between their sidewalk and the street into a vegetable garden. And they asked their neighbors to join them.

Marguerite and her boys put out a sign that said “We’re tired of rising food and fuel prices, so we’re going to turn this weed patch into a P-Patch (an organic community garden).” Three families in their neighborhood responded, and in a matter of days, they turned a chunk of wasted urban space into a productive food garden.

I’m going to post pictures of this new community garden next week, but first I wanted to share a video called This Is Your Lawn that Marguerite sent me this morning. Kitchen Gardeners International has started a grassroots campaign called Eat the View with a mission to plant edible gardens in high profile places. One of the goals of Eat the View is to convince the next president to dig up a portion of the White House lawn and plant a kitchen garden. The garden would help feed the first family and support local food banks in Washington DC.

How cool would that be? The This Is Your Lawn video is awesome, and after I watched it, I immediately went to Eat the View’s website and signed the White House Food Garden Petition. I hope that you’ll take a few minute to check out this video and then pass it along. If the next president does plant a kitchen garden, you’ll know that you were part of the movement that made it happen.