Baltimore, which sometimes carries a poor-cousin chip on its shoulder when it comes to the nation's capital, is about to trump the city to the south.
Mayor Sheila Dixon is planning to turn the formal gardens in front of City Hall into vegetable gardens covering about 2,000 square feet. Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden measures only 1,100 square feet.
"This was being planned before the White House," said Dixon, firmly. "We are not copying!"
The city will be planting decorative urns, about 70 window boxes and several formal raised beds with spring and summer vegetable crops that will benefit Our Daily Bread, which feeds 700 to 800 people a day and often finds itself, even in summer, relying on canned vegetables.
"We have a cook who is thrilled," said Kerrie Burch DeLuca, director of communications for the soup kitchen.
When asked how many recipes she had for Swiss chard, a favorite element in the design for the City Hall gardens, she laughed. "We will find some," she said. "Nothing will go begging. This is our happy day."
City Hall's move reflects the growing interest in vegetable gardens this year as consumers try to deal with a tough economy and concerns about health and food safety.
"This news about Baltimore is wonderful news," said Roger Doiron, founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based nonprofit that advocates for locally grown food and has campaigned for high-profile vegetable gardens. "It will inspire people to rethink the role cities can play in feeding themselves."
Doiron credits the Obama garden with creating a "domino effect" in the United States. "This is why we pushed so hard for so long," he said. "We knew [a White House vegetable garden] would have this inspirational potential."
This week, California first lady Maria Shriver announced plans for a vegetable garden at the Statehouse in Sacramento. Citizens in Flint, Mich., are planting a 2-acre vegetable garden in the middle of town. A garden is planned around the Kingston, N.Y., town hall, Doiron said, and the first family of Georgia is discussing an official garden. Maryland's first lady, Katie O'Malley, is planning a vegetable garden for Government House in Annapolis, too, despite the abundance of shade trees.
Planting for the Baltimore vegetable garden is expected to begin Saturday. The plantings will extend from the porches of City Hall across War Memorial Plaza to Gay Street.
