George Washington has been a hero of the cannabis movement ever since he famously told his gardener to “Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, sow it everywhere.” But, ironically, that seed has not been sown at Washington’s home at Mount Vernon since the man himself planted it.
Until 2018, that is.
Last year, thanks to changing laws regarding marijuana’s non-psychotropic cousin, the workers at Mount Vernon planted and harvested a small plot of hemp on the same land that the first president used to grow the plant two centuries ago.
“It’s been tremendously exciting to bring back a crop that hasn’t been grown since Washington’s day,” says Dean Norton, the estate’s current head gardener, or director of horticulture, as he is known today. “That’s kind of our mission, trying to represent this site as it was during his time.”
And while the plot at Mount Vernon is tiny -- only about 1,000 square feet -- it represents not just the past as it was in the time of our first president, but the future in a state looking for a new agricultural lifeline.
Read the full story at greenentrepreneur.com
