State-Journal.com - Greening the mansion

Landscaping is no casual matter at the Governor's Mansion, as became apparent in the 1980s when trees were chopped down to convert the shady front lawn into a sunny formal garden. That sudden transformation generated no small amount of criticism locally, even though the redesign probably was pretty much in keeping with the neo-classical architecture based on Queen Marie Antoinette's French villa.

There's nothing so controversial in the gardening embellishments added by today's tenants of the mansion, who are bringing at least a touch of down-home flavor to the early 20th century estate, as detailed in a recent story by Paul Glasser.

You're probably not going to see Gov. Steve Beshear and his wife, Jane, in their jeans digging up a plot for green beans and potatoes behind their palatial residence. The responsibilities of state leadership require them to delegate horticultural tasks to others. Ann Evans, executive director of the mansion, sought advice from native Kentuckian Jon Carloftis, who currently does rooftop garden designs for celebrities in the Big Apple. Among his contributions to the Governor's Mansion: tomatoes, apples and herbs, including rosemary, sage and mint (just in time for julep season).

The edible landscape grows in planters coordinated with the mansion architecture, and it's a good bet few weeds will be allowed to invade this particular backyard. Still, what amounts to a modest kitchen garden sends the welcome message that homegrown food is stylish even in upscale neighborhoods. There are some places where you'll search in vain for vegetable gardens among the half-million-dollar manors. Whether from deed restrictions or snobbery, potato patches are apparently deemed inappropriate in such an aristocratic milieu. (Or maybe the owners are just too busy trying to stay out of foreclosure.)

The first lady, who envisions additional steps to conserve energy at the mansion and promote local food production, pointed out that the average American meal travels 1,200 miles from farm to table. Even a small garden can provide wholesome fare with minimal transportation cost.

Yet, fewer Americans seem to be growing gardens in the 21st century. A survey by the National Gardening Association discovered the number of households engaged in lawn and garden activities during 2007 was 3 million fewer than the average between 2002 and 2006. At the same time, they spent $1 billion more on lawn and garden products than in the previous year.

The poll found most of the expenditures were by people 55 and older, college graduates, married couples, those with annual incomes of $75,000 or more, Southerners, two-person households and people with no children at home.

Another study, funded by the Nature Conservancy, reported a couple of years ago that visitation to national parks had been declining since 1987 after growing for the previous 50 years. Steve McCormick, president and CEO of the group, blamed the expansion of electronic entertainment, which keeps young people indoors with their eyes glued to some video screen rather than outside in the natural world. This raised concerns that future generations, lacking any real connection with the environment, might take little interest in saving it.

A recurrent theme of TV gardening shows is how to get children involved in planting and cultivation, evidently almost as big a challenge as persuading them to read newspapers " or anything else exceeding the word count of a typical cell-phone text-message. Dirt under the fingernails has limited appeal to a crowd that's more interested in manipulating an iPod than sowing lettuce seeds.

Not that immaturity is the only reason for loss of touch with the natural world. There are plenty of middle-aged people who find hot reality shows more inviting than the real heat they'd experience out in the summer garden. Which in a tangential manner recalls an incident that occurred perhaps 15 years ago when the newspaper still had an extensive staff to "paste up" pages in the production process before computers took over the pre-press tasks. The staffers who did that work also managed at times to rescue editors from making fools of themselves in print, a tradition that's carried on by what remains of the composing room today.

While collaborating on production of the daily paper, we often digressed into discussions of more trivial topics, such as the latest developments on then-popular TV shows. On one such occasion, after others had reviewed whatever series fueled the current buzz, I related my own pleasure in watching the sun sink into the scarlet western sky the evening before.
To which one of my composing-room friends responded, "What channel was that on?"