
Back on the campaign trail for Kev’s Patch last night after some inspiration from Julie and littlem over at the Kev’s Patch campaign website.
Here is the second letter I wrote to the Hon Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Subject: Kev’s Patch – Organic Vegetable Gardening at the Lodge
Dear Prime Minister Rudd,
I am writing to encourage you to reconsider having a vegetable patch at The
Lodge or Kirrabili House. I received a reply back from you stating that
water restrictions was the main factor for not starting an organic vegetable
garden at the Lodge.Recently we have seen Her Majesty The Queen, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama add vegetable gardens to their place of residence.
A productive edible garden can be used to illustrate the solution to a number of important issues facing all Australians.
– Growing our own fruit and vegetables reduces carbon emissions by reducing the transportation of produce, and reduce household waste with composting.
– Home-grown vegetables save water. David Holgrem states that “every
dollar’s worth of fruit and vegetables has needed at least 103 litres of
water to mature. Every equivalent dollar’s worth of home grown food uses
only 20 litres.”– Water conservation can also be demonstrated with the use of rainwater tanks and greywater systems– one of your Government’s own initiatives.
– There are a number of drought tolerant edible plants (amaranth, beans,
broccoli, cucumber, quinoa, rockmelon, tomato, watermelon) including
Australian natives (bush tomato, davidson’s plum, lemon myrtle, midyim,
native lime, native ginger, native rosella, scrub cherry, riberry, warrigal
greens, wild raspberry) that could be grown to show that drought conditions
are not an impediment to having a productive garden.– Gardening is a good way to exercise and can assist families save money in
these trying economic times.Clive Blazey of the Diggers Club has worked out that you need “only 24% of
the potential water from roof collection or just 37% of the potential
recycled greywater” to grow enough fruit and vegetables to support a family
of four. Clive’s article uses figures that are based on Melbourne, which
has a similar annual rainfall to Canberra. Alternatively, Sydney has a higher
rainfall and more relaxed water restrictions, so there’s no reason why
Kirrabili House couldn’t have a vegetable patch.I would love to see the Australian Prime Minister take the initiative on this
relatively inexpensive project to set an example on how gardening can play a part in tackling water conservation and climate change.Yours sincerely,
Gavin
For more information and other letter templates that you can use to craft your own campaign letter, visit www.kevspatch.com for more information. Join the campaign and help the future I attempted to describe yesterday to become partly a reality.
Watch out Kev, or I will send the chooks around! Edwina can get mighty grumpy when she doesn’t get her daily greens!


Quite right Gavin, I only live a few kms from Kirribilli House and we get plenty of rain most of the time. We also availed ourselves of the rebate and put in a water tank for those drier times that are forecast with the return of El Nino.
Keep it up Gavin and you will be on his Christmas card list, LOL.
Margaret
Addendum: When Kevin left the Lodge he took with him his chooks implying that he did at least dip his toes into sustainable living.