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This week, it’s really started to hit that Michelle Obama will be leaving us in eight days. We were still recovering from the First Lady’s own goodbye speech when President Obama emotionally acknowledged his wife in his Chicago-set farewell address. And last night, as Stevie Wonder’s “Please Don’t Go” played, Mrs. Obama made her final late night appearance as First Lady on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. But as much as FLOTUS has accomplished these past eight years, we’re reminded of one of her earliest accomplishments—her White House vegetable garden.
Begun in March of 2009 and located on the South Lawn, the garden was an early precursor to the First Lady’s other initiatives. At the time, she had dubbed herself “mom in chief,” but had not yet launched her campaign to improve children’s nutrition, or her Let’s Move! program. Besides setting an example for healthful eating and sustainability, the produce from the garden is used in the White House Kitchen for the First Family’s meals, with another portion of its crop going to the Food Bank Organization. In 2012, Mrs. Obama published American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America. The book details her experience working on the garden—Mrs. Obama had little experience when she undertook this project—as well as advice for others looking to plant their own plot at home.
“I take great pride in knowing that this little garden will live on as a symbol of the hopes and dreams we all hold of growing a healthier nation for our children,” Mrs. Obama said on that sunny day in early October. Indeed, and with its recent stone, steel, and concrete expansion, this is an accomplishment from the past eight years that’s not going away anytime soon.