Celebrity Organic Gardeners
Celebrities Use Sustainable Methods in Natural Vegetable Gardens
Apr 13, 2009
Love them or hate them, celebrities and their lifestyles have a profound influence on popular opinion. Fortunately, not all celebrities focus solely on the latest fashion or hot nightclub. Like any opinion leader, celebrities can use their power to enact positive social and environmental change. These three well-known celebrities give organic gardeners a different reason to want to win the lottery: the ability to have an organic garden unrestricted by financial or time restrictions.
Martha Stewart
What caterpillar or Japanese beetle would dare to put a pockmark in Martha Stewart’s empire of perfection? Martha Stewart’s home and garden achievements seem out of reach of mere mortals at times, but her organic gardening methods are firmly grounded and accessible to everyone.
Her 90 by 150 feet vegetable garden in Bedford, NY is productive, beautiful, and innovative, featuring such custom-made items like a dibble that creates 88 planting holes with one plunge into the earth. Although Martha does enjoy the luxury of a fulltime gardener, her success is enhanced by eco-friendly ideas like weed-free salt hay mulch and companion planting of mustard greens with cole crops. Martha Stewart’s garden foils tiny predators like cutworms with cardboard collars, while larger varmints can only gaze wistfully at the paradise within a 7-foot tall metal fence.
Alice Waters
Alice Waters’ first passion stemming from her love of organic gardening was her legendary restaurant, Chez Panisse. In 1995, she extended her gift for sustainable gardening by founding the Edible Schoolyard project, which involves students in growing and harvesting produce from a one-acre garden. The program uses the garden to foster life skills as well as learning fundamentals like science and history.
In an era of childhood obesity, the gardening outcome is as important as the process, and Alice Waters strives to reform school lunch programs through grants provided by her Chez Panisse Foundation. This partnership is bound to see increasing success, as what gardener hasn’t observed the wonder in a child’s eyes when he samples something he's nurtured from seed?
Michelle Obama
Many people are eager to see what comes to fruition in Michelle Obama’s organic vegetable garden this year. The Obamas demonstrated their awareness of the challenges that face both home gardeners and farmers by installing a honeybee colony, purported to be resistant to the parasites that may contribute to colony collapse disorder. The garden will include such popular choices as mint, lettuce, and berries, but don’t expect any growing tips on beets to emerge from the White House. The president doesn’t like them, and requested they be excluded from the plant list.
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