- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Last weekend, the director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Rose Hayden-Smith, wrote a note on her Facebook page about the possibility raised by Gov. Schwarzenegger of selling off state-owned assets to ease the budget crunch. The Ventura County Fairgounds is on Schwarzenegger's short list of properties to go on the block.
Positive feedback prompted Hayden-Smith to write out her objections to the idea and post them in her ANR blog. The Huffington Post then picked up the article, titled "Of California, Fairgrounds and Things I Can't Afford to...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
At its Earth Day celebration today, the USDA will share expanded plans for a People's Garden at the department's Washington Mall headquarters that will encompass all of the facility's grounds, according to an article in the Washington Post. The plan includes a 1,300-square-foot organic vegetable garden, ornamental flower gardens and bioswales (mini-wetlands designed to reduce pollution and surface water runoff).
According to the Post story, written by Jane Black, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack got the idea to include the entire six-acre facility in his plans on one of his daily runs on the Mall. Originally, he...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A Ventura County UC Cooperative Extension master composter, Lorraine Rubin, wrote a guest column published in the Ventura County Star over the weekend about the increasing popularity of food gardening. She attributed growth in the age-old hobby to high food costs, job losses, hunger, concerns about food quality, climate change and dwindling energy supplies.
Rubin wrote that the acting county director in the Ventura office, Rose Hayden-Smith, is a nationally recognized leader in the effort to boost home gardening. Hayden-Smith, Rubin wrote in the article, "has been crisscrossing the nation giving speeches,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
President-elect Barack Obama has a few things to attend to in the coming months - wars, health care, education, poverty, to name a few. Many green thumbs would also like to see him tending a White House garden, or at least authorizing one.
A campaign encouraging Obama to plant a garden, launched by Roger Doiron, an organic gardener from Scarborough, Maine, has 20,000 supporters, according to an opinion piece in the Huffington Post. In the column, writer Paula Crossfield referred to an article by UC Cooperative Extension county director Rose Hayden-Smith, a history expert who is actively supporting a movement to...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A Philadelphia Inquirer article published late last week included comments from UC Cooperative Extension resident historian Rose Hayden-Smith, a 4-H Youth Development advisor in Ventura County.
Hayden-Smith's expertise is sought from time to time when media outlets are writing trend pieces on growing interest in gardening. In this one, reporter Ginny Smith writes about front-yard vegetable gardening and an activist's call for the next president to plant a garden on the front lawn of the White House.
Hayden-Smith said several presidents "probably had vegetable, herb or kitchen gardens."
"Early presidents were responsible for...
