In this paper, we describe a measurement technique for the backscattering coefficient and ground truth of a vegetation canopy in detail. A simple microwave backscattering model for vegetation canopies is verified by being compared with this measurement. An R-band$(1.7sim2.0GHz)$ scatterometer system is used to measure the backscattering coefficient of a vegetated area in the Han-river park for various incidence angles and a wide range of the soil moisture contents. It is found that the model agrees quite well with the measurements for co-polarized radar backscatter, and needs a correction for cross polarized radar backscatter.