Water Restrictions are not a valid excuse Kevin!

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!