Daily Times

Sir: Like many others in this country, I have not been fortunate enough to visit the famous White House Kitchen Garden, but I have seen various images of these multiple vegetable gardens, emailed both by my environment caring and nature lover friends from the US, and also by bodies such as the Authority Nutrition, among others. These unique gardens have inspired all and sundry across the globe but at least not our ruling elite, bureaucrats and technocrats who live in palatial official residences.

Last month, I had an opportunity to visit two friends working as commissioner and deputy commissioner respectively in two different provinces. I could find a lot of space designated at both the official accommodations to develop gardens, especially kitchen gardens/orchards but could not find even a single vegetable or a sapling grown there. It is only a visionary leader like President Barack Obama and charismatic women like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, among others, who can understand the meaning and message of these noble words of Thomas Jefferson, “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.”

HASHIM ABRO

Islamabad