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August
Vegetable gardening is cool. Who knew?
On Earth Day this year, Julia Roberts demonstrated
composting on Oprah's TV show. Also recently,
centenarian-tracking "Today Show" weather
forecaster Willard Scott called on Americans to
revive the victory gardens of the World War II era
to enhance their food security. Finally, NASA has
announced that astronauts on a future mission to
Mars will grow their own vegetables in hydroponic
gardens on board the spacecraft.
These seemingly unrelated events point to a
trend that could have a tremendous impact on those
of us in the gardening community: We have to
prepare ourselves for the fact that we are about to
become cool.
Because obviously, no one epitomizes cool like
Willard Scott.
The new popularity of gardening may seem like a
sudden development. But in fact, anyone who has
been conscientious enough to monitor Google news
alerts for funny gardening stories over the past
few years, as I have, could see this trend
coming.
Iggy Pop's green thumb
Last year, for example, punk legend Iggy Pop's
garden won a medal at the prestigious Chelsea
Flower Show in England. And here in America,
gardening is even hipper and edgier, as this recent
headline shows: "Rappers arrested for gun
possession after Garden show." I don't condone
carrying illegal firearms, but I was impressed that
famous hip-hop artists were interested in attending
a garden show in the first place.
Oh, wait, it turns out they were performing a
show at Madison Square Garden. Never mind. I guess
I should read more than just the headlines, because
when I do, I learn that a wide range of
celebrities, from rocker Tommy Lee to author Salman
Rushdie, gush about their love of gardening in
interviews. Even such megastars as NASCAR driver
Jimmy Spencer and bombshell actress Kelly Brook are
into gardening, according to news stories. OK, I've
never heard of them either, but apparently they are
rather well known among the young people of
today.
This is the key point, because celebrities and
young people are our society's supreme arbiters of
coolness. So if they are growing food, the concept
of cool-season gardening takes on a whole new
meaning.
When I was a young adult, I liked plants and
gardens. That sure didn't make me cool. Back then,
the cool kids were wearing pink polo shirts with
upturned collars and vying for jobs at investment
banks. This was a time when Van Halen and Chuck
Norris were considered cool, to give you an idea
how far we've come.
A generation ago, growing vegetables wasn't even
cool among gardeners, as I was shocked to discover
while leafing through the 1968 edition of the
"Better Homes and Gardens New Garden Book." Here's
what this definitive guide had to say on the
subject: "By the time you buy seeds, plants,
fertilizers, fungicides, and insecticides - then
pay yourself even a minimum wage - you aren't
saving any money on groceries by growing your own
vegetables. And unless you borrow a hoe and a rake
from the neighbors, you'll need a further
investment in tools and equipment. While you're
handing out the cash, remember that overworked
maxim - there are some things that money can't buy.
We're certain the register still includes happiness
and the taste of home-grown vegetables." Wow, you
know something is uncool when even the most
authoritative book promoting it basically says it's
a waste of time.
But young people are flocking to the garden
nowadays, perhaps as a way to channel their
big-picture environmental concerns and their
personal worries about soaring food prices into a
tangible way to make a difference. And if you skip
all the fungicides, herbicides and insecticides,
which defeat the purpose anyway, organic gardening
is certainly an economical way to produce a lot of
good, healthy food.
Revenge of the nerds
What we are witnessing is the revenge of the
horticultural nerds. When I was in college, growing
tomatoes in a pot on my dorm room balcony made me
the dweebiest of dorks. Now, hip young "guerrilla
gardeners" sneak onto vacant city lots and
surreptitiously plant lettuce and garlic. Somehow,
gardening has become wild and dangerous, a radical
way to rebel against authority and subvert the
dominant industrial-food paradigm. Next thing you
know, rappers really will be hanging out at garden
shows.
We gardeners will still be hanging out in our
gardens, tending our veggies and waiting to see if
the recent buzz of interest in our hobby is a
passing fad or part of a lasting effort to
diversify our food system. And because it's a cool
thing to do now, our kids just might want to be
there with us, learning skills that will help them
succeed in the modern world. Especially if they
grow up to be astronauts.
© 2008 John
Hershey
Other Father Issues,
Books
* * *
Parents are the bones on which children sharpen
their teeth. - Peter Ustinov
John Hershey
is a dad, a writer, and a lawyer (in that order).
He writes a syndicated biweekly humor column about
parenting and family life.. His columns have been
published or accepted for publication on websites
and in magazines around the world, from Maine to
Oregon, Colorado down to Texas, and down under in
Australia.
Blood, Phlegm & Bile:
Parenting with Humor appears monthly on
menstuff.org. But, why the gross title? Well, for
one thing these are three substances with which
every parent becomes quite familiar. They were also
called the "humors" by medieval scientists who
believed that the proportion of these bodily fluids
determined a person's health and temperament. So
it's a pun! A pun requiring a lengthy explanation,
but a pun nonetheless. E-Mail
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