ROOTED IN AGRICULTURE

Seeds & Weeds (702)| Instructor|

Washington D.C.

Karen M’Closkey

Since the creation of the United States, there has been a desire to establish a national Botanical Garden. The original goals of the United States Botanical Garden were based on the promotion of utilitarian plants, primarily those of agricultural interest. Historic plant expeditions sponsored by the USDA sparked the beginning of the agricultural revolution and the road for the US as an industrial agricultural nation. Yet overtime, as people have shifted from work away from the land, they have become disconnected from the plants and the diverse cultural significance of the agricultural landscape. Rooted in Agriculture counteracts this by imagining an agricultural extension of the US Botanical Garden located at the base of the Washington Monument; adjacent to the USDA and the National Museum of African American History & Culture; and mirrored from the original USBG. With agricultural land representing the most rapidly expanding ecosystem, and greatest driver of biodiversity loss, botanical gardens play a valuable role in educating the public on agriculture. Likewise, they can culturally contextualize plants, allowing for people to understand their relationships to plants present and historically.

3 AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN WASHINGTON D.C.

Sites of Germplasm Accession Existing | No longer Existing

PLANT BLINDNESS: THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN FARMER

One only needs to examine the background of the four biggest global cash crops to understand the global advancement of the United States as an industrial agricultural nation. While these four crops are the contemporary face of agriculture, they represent a narrow part of US agricultural history. Analyzing these crops sparked a desire to break them down as more than a commodity, and to dig into their symbolic and contentious nature to reveal an alternative narrative of agricultural legacy on the National Mall