By now, I’m sure everyone knows about the White House’s organic kitchen garden.  It’s an exciting and inspiring program.  What’s even more exciting is Michelle Obama’s apparent influence over the Queen of England.  The Queen has planted a vegetable garden at Buckingham Palace, the first one on royal grounds since the victory gardens of World War II.  The first one ever at Buckingham Palace, which is surprising since they have over 40 acres of garden and Prince Charles has been a long time supporter of organic foods.  You can read more about the Queen here: Obama Foodorama  I hope this is a trend that continues to grow, worldwide.

Michelle Obama is in San Francisco today, along with Maria Shriver, to talk about building playgrounds for kids as a way to combat childhood obesity, along with nutrition and gardening.  What a difference an administration makes!  There’s an administration agency called the Corporation for National and Community Service that has developed Community Garden Toolkits.  These kits will give you the basics to plan a community garden, recruit a group of people, organize your group and grow food.  This is especially helpful to urban dwellers without yards that want to grow a garden.

June 22-28 is National Pollinator Week.  Bees are crucial to a garden’s success, and to our survival.  Bees pollinate the fruits, nuts and vegetables that we hope to eat as well as plants like cotton that we use to make out clothes.  If the flowers of these plants aren’t pollinated the fruits and nuts etc. don’t grow.  You can see the bee, at the top of the page, pollinating my blackberries.

I was very happy to hear that the White House also has a bee hive.  Here’s a picture of it.  The White House chefs are using honey to make salad dressings and cupcakes.

If you’d like to send a “Thank you, Mrs. Obama!” note to the first Lady for inspiring and educating everyone about health and gardening, go here to join WHOFarm’s project.