The Girl Who Planted Gardens

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden.

Each week here on the Grow youw.

Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk. Go, go on a drive or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

My hope is to see 100 new organic gardens in our area this year.

I would love to help you and.

Your friends uncover your own garden. Love.

Ready to get started?

Contact the Rooted Garden with your questions.

This is a little excerpt of the.

First email I ever sent out from.

My little tiny computer back in 2015. It was the fall when I started the Rooted Garden in Houston, Texas, and I let my friends and family and anyone who I knew their email address know that I had started this little company and that my dream was to start 100 gardens in my first year. Where did I get this idea of 100 gardens in a year? Well, it was from an inspiring story.

That I'm going to tell you today.

On the Grow youw Self podcast. It's a special one, so put in your AirPods, your earbuds, your headphones, let's take a walk and let's be inspired to change the world world one seed at a time. Here we go. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self Podcast. Today is a super duper special day.

Special episode here on the podcast.

We are at number 18, I believe, which is crazy. And my book, Kitchen Garden Revival is finally out in the world. After several delays due due to coronavirus and the pandemic, my book is finally.

Reaching everyone's mailboxes this week.

It came out May 5, so depending on when you're listening to this, it.

Should be with you wherever you are.

I can't believe it.

The book was such a huge passion.

Project for me and to hold it in my hands and to see you guys holding it too is just is an amazing feeling. So if you have not ordered your book yet, please do so. You can go to gardenary.combook to find out how to order. You also can get some special links.

And resources that I'd love to give.

You after you order your book. So once you order your book, please email your receipt to helloardenary.com and we will hook you up with some amazing gardening resources to complement all that you're.

Going to learn inside the book.

Also, I'm going to just add one more line here. If you would please go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Goodreads and leave a review about the book, I would absolutely love you for it. Take a screenshot of your review and.

Email that to us as well@helloardenary.com for.

A chance to win some awesome gifts that we're giving away this first week.

With the book's release.

Okay, onto the story. So today I want to tell you a story that prompted all that you see and know about me now. So I read this story probably in 2014, maybe 2013, as I was really.

Beginning to grow a love for gardening.

And just learning all that I could. I'm sure it was one day I.

Was googling and youtubing and I stumbled upon this story called the man who Planted Trees. And it was just so inspiring and taught me a concept that I use every day in my garden and in.

My life called the Compound Effect.

So this podcast is going to be.

A combination of the story the man.

Who Planted Trees, my own story, which I'm calling the Girl who Planted Gardens.

And this idea of the Compound Effect.

And how it can change our world for the better with the little things that we do.

So get cozy and let me tell you a story. This book was written.

It's a very short book and you.

Can, by the way, see the entire thing in Beautiful Animation on YouTube and you can actually read the entire book.

It only takes a short while to.

Read the story for free online.

So it was written by French man Jean Giorno. I think I'm saying his name right. He's the only son of a cobbler.

And and a laundress.

And he was one of France's greatest writers.

This is straight from Google, by the way.

His prodigious literary output included stories, essays, poetry, plays, film scripts, translations, and over 30 novels, many of which have been translated into English. Giono was a pacifist and was twice imprisoned in France at the outset and.

Conclusion of World War II.

He remained tied to Provence and Monosque I don't know if I'm saying that right. The little city where he was born in 1895 and in 1970 died. Giono was awarded the pri Britano. I'm sorry, I'm messing up all this French. The Prix de Monaco for the most.

Outstanding collected work by a French writer. Okay, enough about him. He was obviously amazing.

He wrote this short story and it's very powerful. So let's get going.

You ready?

I'm going to read you excerpts of this story.

It's written from the perspective of a young man. About 40 years ago, I was taking a long trip on foot over mountain.

Heights quite unknown to tourists in that ancient region where the Alps thrust down into Provence. All this, at the time I embarked upon my long walk through these deserted regions, was barren and colorless land. Nothing grew there but wild lavender.

I was crossing the area at its.

Widest point and after three days walking, found myself in the midst of unparalleled desolation. I camped near the vestiges of an abandoned village. I had run out of water the day before, and I had to find some. These clustered houses, although in ruins like an old wasp's nest, suggested that there must once have been a spring or a well here. There was indeed a spring, but it was dry. The five or six houses roofless, gnawed by wind and rain. The tiny chapel with its crumbling steeple stood about like the houses and chapels in living villages. But all life had vanished. It was a fine June day, brilliant with sunlight, but over this unsheltered land high in the sky, the wind blew with unendurable ferocity.

It growled over the carcasses of the.

Houses like a lion disturbed at its meal. I had to move my camp. After five hours walking, I had still not found water, and there was nothing to give me any hope of finding any. All about me was the same dryness, the same coarse grasses. I thought I glimpsed in the distance a small black silhouette upright and took it for the trunk of a solitary tree. In any case, I started toward was a shepherd. 30 sheep were lying about him on the baking earth. He gave me a drink from his water gourd and a little later took me to his cottage in a fold of the plain. He drew his water, excellent water, from a very deep natural well above which he had constructed a primitive winch.

Later they end up going into his home and having dinner together. So here is from that.

The shepherd went to fetch a small sack and poured out a heap of acorns on the table. He began to Inspect them one by one, with great concentration, separating the good from the bad. I smoked my pipe. I did offer to help him. He told me that it was his job.

And, in fact, seeing the care he.

Devoted to the task, I did not insist. That was the whole of our conversation.

When he had set aside a large.

Enough pile of good acorns, he counted them out by tens, meanwhile eliminating the small ones or those which were slightly cracked. For now he examined them more closely. When he had thus selected 100 perfect acorns, he stopped and we went to bed. There was peace in being with this man.

The next day I asked if I might rest here for a day. He found it quite natural, or, to.

Be more exact, he gave me the impression that nothing could startle him. My rest was not absolutely necessary, but I was interested and wished to know more about him. He opened the pen and led his flock to pasture. Before leaving, he plunged his sack of carefully selected and counted acorns into a pail of water. I noticed that he carried for a stick an iron rod as thick as my thumb and about a yard and a half long. Resting myself by walking, I followed a path parallel to his. His pasture was in a valley.

He left the dog in charge of.

The little flock and climbed toward where I stood.

I was afraid that he was about.

To rebuke me for my indiscretion. But it was not that at all. This was the way he was going, and he invited me to go along if I had nothing better to do. He climbed to the top of the ridge about a hundred yards away. There he began thrusting his iron rod into the earth, making a hole in which he planted an acorn. Then he refilled the hole. He was planting oak trees. I asked him if the land belonged to him. He answered no.

Did he know whose it was?

He did not. He supposed it was community property or perhaps belonged to people who cared nothing about it. He was not interested in finding out whose it was. He planted his hundred acorns with the greatest care. After the midday meal, he resumed his planting. I suppose I must have been fairly insistent in my questioning, for he answered me.

For three years he had been planting.

Trees in this wilderness. He had planted 100,000 of the hundred thousand. 20,000 had sprouted. Of the 20,000, he still expected to lose about half to rodents or to the unpredictable designs of providence. There remained 10,000 oak trees to grow where nothing had grown before. That was when I began to wonder about the age of this man. He was obviously over 50, 55. He told me his name was Elzeard Bouffier. He had once had a farm in the lowlands. There he had had his life. He had lost his only son, then his wife. He had withdrawn into this solitude, where his pleasure was to live leisurely with his lambs and his dog. It was his opinion that this land was dying for want of trees. He added that, having no very pressing business of his own, he had resolved to remedy this state of affairs. Since I was at that time, in spite of my youth, leading a solitary life, I understood how to deal gently with solitary spirits. But my very youth forced me to consider the future in relation to myself and to a certain quest for happiness. I told him that in 30 years his 10,000 oaks would be magnificent.

He answered quite simply that if God granted him life in 30 years he.

Would have planted so many more.

Then these 10,000 would be like a.

Drop of water in the ocean.

Besides, he was now studying the reproduction.

Of beech trees and had a nursery of seedlings grown from beech nuts near his cottage.

The seedlings, which he had protected from.

His sheep with a wire fence, were very beautiful. He was also considering birches for the.

Valleys, where, he told me, there was.

A certain amount of moisture a few yards below the surface of the soil.

The next day we parted.

Now I am going to read you.

From the last section of this story. In between.

Here the young man goes to war and has to fight in the war.

The war over, I found myself possessed of a tiny demobilization bonus and a.

Huge desire to breathe fresh air. For a while. It was with no other objective that I again took the road to the barren lands. The countryside had not changed, however. Beyond the deserted village I glimpsed into the distance a sort of grayish mist that covered the mountaintops like a carpet.

Since the day before, I had begun.

To think again of the shepherd tree planter. Ten thousand oaks, I reflected, really take up quite a bit of space. I had seen too many men die during those five years not to imagine easily that Elzear Bouffier was dead, especially since at 20, one regards men of 50 as old men with nothing left to do but die. He was not dead. As a matter of fact, he was extremely spry. He had changed jobs. Now he had only four sheep, but instead a hundred beehives. He got rid of the sheep because they threatened his young trees, for, he told me, and I saw for myself, the war had disturbed him not at all. He had imperturbably continued to plant. The Oaks of 1910 were 10 years old and Taller than either of us. It was an impressive spectacle. I was literally speechless. And as he did not talk, we spent the whole day walking in silence through his forest. In three sections, it measured 11 km in length and 3 km at its greatest width.

When you remember that all this had.

Sprung from the hands and the soul of this one man without technical resources.

You understood that humans could be as.

Effectual as God in other realms than that of destruction. He had pursued his plan, and beech trees as high as my shoulder, spreading out as far as the eye could reach, confirmed it. He showed me handsome clumps of birch planted five years before, that is, in 1915, when I had been fighting at Verdun. He had set them out in all the valleys, where he'd guessed, and rightly, that there was moisture almost at the surface of the ground. They were as delicate as young girls and very well established. Creation seemed to come about in a sort of chain reaction.

He did not worry about it.

He was determinedly pursuing his task in all its simplicity. But as we went back toward the village, I saw water flowing in brooks that had been dry since human memory. This was the most impressive result of the chain reaction that I had seen. These dry streams had once, long ago, run with water. Some of the dreary villages I mentioned before had been built on the sites of ancient Roman settlements, traces of which still remained.

And archaeologists exploring there had found fish.

Hooks where in the 20th century, cisterns were needed to assure a small supply of water. The wind, too, scattered seeds. As the water reappeared, so there reappeared willows, rushes, meadows, gardens, flowers, and a certain purpose in alive. But the transformation took place so gradually that it became part of the pattern without causing any astonishment. Hunters climbing into the wilderness in pursuit of hares or wild boar had of course noticed the sudden growth of little trees, but they'd attributed it to some natural caprice of the earth. That's why no one meddled with Alziard Bouffier's work. If he had been detected, he would have had opposition. He was indetectable. Who in the villages or in the administration could have dreamed of such perseverance and a magnificent generosity? And now, the ending.

I saw LZR Buffier for the last time in June of 1945.

He was then 87.

I had started back along the route through the wastelands.

But now, in spite of this order in which the war had left the country, there was a bus running between the Durance Valley and the mountain.

I attributed the fact that I no.

Longer recognized the scenes of my earlier journeys to this relatively speedy transportation. It seemed to me, too, that the route took me through new territory. It took the name of the village to convince me that I was actually in that region. That had once been all ruins and desolation. The bus put me down in Vergon. I don't know if I'm saying that.

Right, by the way. In 1913, this hamlet of 10 or.

12 houses had three inhabitants. They'd been savage creatures, hating one another, living by trapping game. Little removed both physically and morally. From the conditions of prehistoric humanity. All about them were nettles were feeding upon the remains of abandoned houses. Their condition seemed beyond hope. For them, nothing but to await death. A situation which rarely predisposes to virtue. But now everything was changed. Even the air. Instead of the harsh, dry winds that.

Used to attack me.

A gentle breeze was blowing, laden with scents. A sound like water came from the mountains. It was the wind in the forest. Most amazing of all, I heard the actual sound of water falling into a pool. I saw that a fountain had been built, that it flowed freely. And what touched me most. That someone had planted a linden beside it. A linden that must have been four years old, already in full leaf, the incontestable symbol of resurrection. Besides, virgones bore evidence of labor. At the sort of undertaking for which hope is required. Hope had returned. Ruins had been cleared away, Dilapidated walls torn down. And five houses restored. Now there were 28 inhabitants. Four of them young married couples. The new houses, freshly plastered, Were surrounded by kitchen gardens. Where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion. Cabbages and roses, leeks and snapdragons, celery and anemones. It was now a village where one would like to live. From that point on, I went on foot.

The war, just finished, had not yet.

Allowed the full blooming of life. But Lazarus was out of the tomb.

On the lower slopes of the mountain.

I saw little fields of barley and rye. Deep in the narrow valleys, the meadows were turning green. It has taken only the eight years since then. For the whole countryside to glow with health and prosperity. On the site of ruins that I had seen in 1913. Now stand neat farms, cleanly plastered, Testifying to a happy and comfortable life. The old streams, fed by the rains and snows. That the forest conserves. Are flowing again. Their waters have been channeled on each farm in groves of maples. Fountain pools overflow into carpets of fresh mint. Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt. People from the plains, where land is costly, have settled here. Bringing youth, motion and the spirit of adventure. Along the roads you meet hardy men and women, boys and girls, who understand laughter and have recovered a taste for picnics.

Counting the former population, unrecognizable now that.

They live in comfort, more than 10,000 people owe their happiness to Elzeard Bouffier.

When I reflect that one man, armed.

Only with his own physical and moral.

Resources, was able to cause this land.

Of Canaan to spring from the wasteland.

I am convinced that in spite of everything, humanity is admirable. But when I compute the unfailing greatness of spirit and the tenacity of benevolence that it must have taken to achieve this result, I am taken with an immense respect for that old and unlearned peasant who was able to complete a work worthy of God. Alzire Bouffier died peacefully in 1947 at.

The hospice in Bonan.

The End that story kind of makes me want to cry. So I stumbled upon this story as I was beginning to garden, and I was so struck by it. I was amazed to to hear the very believable story that doing a little thing every day could add up to big change. To see this man who started in a barren land all by himself and just carefully counted out 100 acorns a day, could plant those seeds each and every day, faithfully, knowing that really less than 10% of his work would last. I love the math he shares that he planted 100 seeds a day. That over those three years he was.

Sure he had planted 100,000 trees, only.

20,000 had made it, and he was okay with the fact that probably only 10,000 would survive the next few years. And yet he kept planting. This story struck me in the deepest way. I was a mom to four kids at the time. I still am four young kids, and I was still trying to find my own way and the way that I wanted to make a difference in the world at this time. I love being a mom, and I find so much meaning in it. But I also had a deep desire to do something career wise that I believed in and that I felt would make a positive difference in the world for everyone. So this story really struck a chord with me. I knew that I didn't live on a French plane. I knew that even if I tried to plant 100 acorns in the city of Houston every day, they'd get mowed down by all the mowers and blowers and goers in the city. But it did give me a vision of how you can do a little thing and do it a lot and make a big difference. And so this brings me to that first email I send out to introduce my company, Roota Garden back in November of 2015. I'm going to read it to you now in fullness. It's a picture of me sitting there with my little bowl of lettuce in my garden. There are two things I love most about Houston, Texas, the people and the gardening. The Rooted Garden, my new small business brings these two loves together. I recently launched the Rooted Garden to help friends and neighbors plan, build and maintain their own backyard organic gardens. Since my family of six moved to Houston, we've been able to grow enough.

Lettuce, kale and other greens from October.

To April to feed all of us. The kids eat veggies they would otherwise never touch. We have more than enough to share with our neighbors and we get to experience the magic of seeds becoming food right before our eyes. Anyone can grow vegetables successfully year round in Houston. All you need is a raised garden bed, organic compost and soil, high quality seeds and advice and encouragement. I would love to help you and.

Your friends turn a piece of your yard into a salad bowl.

You can start growing on your patio.

Porch or yard in very small spaces. The Rooted Garden offers classes and tastings.

Right from my backyard garden consultation and.

Raised bed installation and maintenance.

We can give you the tools and advice to diy or we can serve.

You in your garden through every step. My hope is to see 100 new organic gardens in our area this year.

I would love to help you and.

Your friends uncover your own garden love.

Ready to get started? Contact the Rooted Garden with your questions. And then I showed off a bowl of lettuce I harvested last week. This lettuce was grown from seed in.

Less than four weeks. You can grow your own just like this. Pretty exciting, right?

Then I convince people that they can.

Receive 10% off their first rooted garden.

Purchase if they sign up for my.

Newsletter and share the Rooted Garden with their friends.

This was all the way back in.

November of 2015, almost to the date.

Oh, just about, I guess, four and a half years ago. Where did I come up with that number? 100 organic gardens? Well, from this story, of course. I knew I couldn't start 100 gardens a day, but I could send an email to 100 people a day and plant the seed of opportunity in their mind that hopefully would turn into 100 new gardens in our city in one year's time. I've continued to have dreams like that and plan big numbers like that, but still continue to picture the story of.

The man who planted trees as my inspiration.

But for me, for my little thing that I want to do in the world, it's to start gardens. So instead of the man who planted trees, it's the girl who started gardens. I know that I can't, at least right now, where I am, set up forests and streams and grow lots and.

Lots of trees on a mountainside.

But I do believe in the difference that one raised bed full of beautiful, organic plants can do for a person, for a backyard, for an ecosystem, for a community, and eventually for the whole planet. I loved the picture that this story gave me of how things all work together, how the trees that he planted literally changed the weather, how streams came.

Back into the area, how wildlife returned.

How flowers grew, how the wind changed.

How the temperatures changed, changed.

It's just a perfect picture of how little things really do add up. And so for me and my thing, my vision is that all these little.

Gardens all across the backyards of all.

Of our homes can really add up to change our communities, to change our.

Weather, to change our climate, and to.

Change the world for the better. I can remember a few years into my business, I would be driving to serve or meet with some of my clients. And as word travels through referrals, I would end up often with a number.

Of clients, all on, say, two or three streets together.

And so I drive to one spot.

And then go to the other and the other, all within, say, a block or two of one another.

And I started to get this picture of bees and butterflies and other insects, birds, and possibly even, you know, less optimal animals like rabbits or squirrels kind of going between these homes and gardens and starting to feel like they had a home again. That the bees would travel from one backyard to the other, passing pollen around and making fruit grow.

That butterflies and monarchs would go from one pollinator garden over to the other.

And suddenly have this new neighbor full of food for them to forage from and to grow and reproduce and to flourish in. And that eventually those populations would grow and get bigger and will replace the systems of simple boxwoods and ornamentals and lots and lots of grass that existed before. This is the vision that I've had for years, and it's the vision that prompted me to write my book, the Kitchen garden revival, Just like I saw happen with my company, Ruta garden in Houston. The book really is to serve a much bigger mission, really the same mission, I guess, but just more exponential. That we wouldn't just see neighborhoods in Houston with backyard raised beds all over a neighborhood, but that we'd see neighborhoods all over the world with new little spaces of annual herbs and leaves and fruits and root crops being grown in all kinds of unique and special spaces that feeds us, that feeds our body, that reconnects us with the food systems of our local communities and economies, and that eventually could actually change the whole world. This story, this idea, really, it started in nature, but we see it in.

Business, we see it in money.

We see it in so many things. And it was summed up in a great book called the Compound Effect. I think it's by Darren Hart, Party. I'm sure you've heard of the idea of compound interest.

It's interest on interest.

So it's what should encourage all of us to save, right? To save our money and to invest it. So it's this idea of exponential growth, that something doesn't just double or triple over time, but that it exponentially grows. And this is what happened in the story, right? He planted trees, and he planted 100 seeds a day, but the overall growth.

And change was exponential.

It wasn't just a simple addition mathematical equation. It was to the powers. It was exponential change because of the little things he did again and again and again. I believe in the compound effect in our everyday lives, in our habits, but also, and especially in the garden. It's amazing to watch this happen. And I'll close with the story of my cilantro. Now, I know not everybody loves cilantro, but I personally do, and it was way back in Nashville. I tell the story of our Nashville garden in my book, and it was my first time to plant cilantro.

Well, I had never watched cilantro go to seed before. The only cilantro I'd ever had was.

From the grocery store harvest, which, by the way, spoil in the fridge in about negative one day. I think you almost bring it home spoiled. Anyway, the place, the flavor was so good from our garden. And then, to my amazement, the plant produced literally hundreds of cilantro seeds from.

Just a couple plants.

So I saved the cilantro seeds, and then I planted them again the next year. And I honestly planted almost all of them because I was so excited. So before I knew it, I had basically a bed completely dedicated to cilantro. And then each of those cilantro plants again produced these incredible seed heads. So, you know, it wasn't just like, I got double the amount of seeds. It was to, like, the third or fourth power. I mean, the amount of seeds that those cilantro plants produced that second year were amazing. So I Took those seeds with me as my family moved to Houston. And as you can guess the way the story goes, I planted those again in my garden. And the next that year, the seeds I harvested from those plants were actually the seeds that I would go and.

Plant in my first client's gardens.

And so the story goes on and on. And even today in my Chicago garden, I've been planting cilantro seeds that I brought from my Houston garden, that I brought from my Nashville garden. So these seeds that I've carried and planted not only in my own gardens in three different climates, but also for all of our rooted garden clients, too, just show this idea of the compound effect, how just one simple act can literally exponentially explode when done again and again. Now, if I'd kept those cilantro seeds from that very first plant and never planted them again, I'd only have that first set of seeds. But because I kept putting them again in the ground the next year and the next year and the next year, over time, I ended up with enough seeds to literally give cilantro to the whole city if I wanted to. I think this is an amazing comfort that we can get from the garden, that the little things we do day in and day out really add up. For me, that is going to be all about spreading the love and the idea of setting up a kitchen garden. I love the kitchen garden because it is a small and simple thing that can fit almost anywhere. It's not asking you to make the.

Huge commitment of homesteading or row gardening or farming.

It's not asking you to live off the grid or to produce all of your own food. It's not asking you to can and store and spend hours and hours in the kitchen. It's just a simple, small seed that you can plant and watch grow into food. And you can do it on a patio or porch, or you can do.

It in a larger part of your back or front yard.

It's beautiful, it connects to your home, it raises your property value, it gives you a place to reconnect with nature, to unwind after a hard day, to learn something new, and to watch the magic of a seed becoming food. But it's doable, it's small, and it's accessible to all of us. So for me, the girl who planted gardens, this is my vision. This is the way I want to make a difference in the world. I want to plant the seed, plant 100 seeds a day of the idea of a kitchen garden in everyone's mind so that hopefully over three years time, there will be 100,000 ideas of gardens that may turn into 20,000 gardens that may turn into 10,000 gardens that will stand the test of time. I know not every time I ask or help someone or offer the advice to start a garden that it will turn in to someone actually gardening successfully for the rest of their life. But I know that over time, the compound effect, true and does happen. And it's amazing to look back at this old email I sent back in 2015 and how nervous I was to press go and send it out to people I knew, how embarrassed I was, honestly. And then to realize that, you know, maybe I'm not even sure that I helped 100 new gardens be set up in Houston that year, but that definitely, in a short period of time, 100 gardens, maybe even 400, 500 gardens have been set up. And now through gardenary and my Garden Coach Society and kitchen Garden Academy, many, Many more than 100 gardens are being set up all the time. My hope and my prayer is that kitchen garden revival will be the tool that can help so many more hundreds of kitchen gardens be set up up in your backyard and in your community and around the world. So this is an invitation to you first to think of this story, to listen to it again, to think about the idea of compound effect, of how the little bitty habits that we do, the little things we plant and pursue in our lives don't look like much at the moment. That email I first sent out, no one, very, very few people took notice of that email. Very few people responded to that email. And many of the first seeds I planted were invisible to, you know, to the outside world, but they mattered. And over time, all those efforts add up. So think about that in your own space and life. How can you take the story of the man who planted trees and decide what it's going to be for you? What's a little thing that you can do a little bit of every single day that over time is going to add up and make a huge difference? I can think of a million suggestions for you. One would be planting a few seeds a day. So planting a few lettuce seeds a day, A few bean seeds a day. So many things that grow easily and in small spaces. What about planting a few flower seeds a day for the butterflies and for the bees? It could be teaching others how to garden, sharing the things that you know. It could be just setting up your box for the first time, and maybe even it could be composting for a little bit every single day, taking things that you otherwise would Toss in the trash and spending a little bit of extra time to turn those things into soil. There's so many little bitty things we can do that add up over time.

To make a huge difference.

A couple ways you can join me with small things is one. You could definitely buy my book, Kitchen Garden Revival and share it. Every single time one of you shares my book with others, it means that the message gets spread and that more people can join in the revival. You can sign up for one of my courses so I have a simple course called the Herb Garden Guide which can help you start to grow herbs at home. It's a super simple way that you can make a big difference by growing your own herbs versus having them trucked.

To you from across the country.

You could sign up for Kitchen Garden Academy. This is the full on 8 module online course that guides you through every step of setting up, planting and growing.

Your own kitchen garden.

Or you could join us in the Garden Coach Society. So the Garden Coach Society is how I train gardeners all over to start businesses similar to mine at Rooted Garden. We've trained over 180 gardeners all over North America and even across the world. In New Zealand, I help gardeners who have the passion and the desire to teach what they know in the garden to others as a profitable profession. So I've taken all that I've learned from growing my own business, Rooted Garden, and this is inside of the Society. So there's nine courses that teach you every part of setting up and growing your own profitable business. There's a membership with the rest of the gardeners, and then there's also the possibility to be listed on the Gardenary Directory, which you can find@gardenary.com so if you are a gardener, I highly encourage you to consider the idea of garden coaching. And we would absolutely love to have you inside the Garden Coach Society. So those are just a few ways that I've created so that you can jump in and join the revival. The thing I've learned more and more is that it's one thing to plant my own seeds and start my own gardens, but it's so much bigger and better for me and more fun to invite others to join me and to plant right alongside me. So consider this your invitation to also become someone who plants gardens. Whether it's your own garden gardens in your community or gardens for your own Garden Coach business. I would love to challenge you and welcome you to join the Kitchen Garden Revival and to become part of this really amazing story of the compound effect of doing a little bit every day to make a huge difference in the world. With love from me, the girl who planted and keeps planting gardens. Thank you so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I cannot wait to see you here again next week. If you haven't yet, please go purchase Kitchen Garden Revival and leave a review wherever you purchased it or would like.

To leave your review.

Take a screenshot, email it to helloardenary.com and we will set you up with some fun gifts. Thank you again for listening. Now let's go plant some seeds needs. I'll see you next week. Thanks again for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. This episode was brought to you by my book Kitchen Garden Revival, which is now out. It is full of the most beautiful photographs by Eric Kelly. All of the photography is film photography. We took it through 19 of my rooted garden kitchen gardens as well as documenting the construction of my new Chicago kitchen garden. I know you're going to love it. I know it will inspire you and I would love it, love it, love it if you would buy it and share it and spread the revival message with me. If you want to find out more about this amazing story called the man who Planted Trees, just google it or go check out the show notes. I'll be linking to the wonderful animation. You can watch it right on your computer. And it actually won. What's that Gif? I don't know the prize. Not the Grammy anyway. It won a super special award for being best animation back in the 80s. So you know, if you're into 80s kind of animation, I think you're gonna love it. Thank you so much for listening to Grow Yourself. Don't forget to keep growing yourself. And don't forget the idea of compound effect. It really is a true thing and it's so awesome. Let's keep planting together. I'll see you next week.