Spring is in the air. Flowers are blooming. The sun is shining. And Michelle Obama is in the White House Garden planting fruits and vegetables alongside local elementary school students.
In its sixth year, the White House Kitchen Garden first began to start a nationwide conversation on healthy eating and was the inspiration for the First Lady's "Let's Move!" campaign.This year, alongside the usual fruits and vegetables, for the first time the group will be planting “pollinator garden." Which is a garden where the flowers are meant to attract bees that then pollinate the plants.
“We don’t even know why some beehives are totally disappearing but that could be a problem for the planet because if you don’t have insects and great pollinators to pollinate the plants it could affect our food source. It could affect our ability to continue to grow things, and that would be a problem," MIchelle Obama said. "This garden is going to help to contribute to improving that problem. So we are going to plant all kinds of flowers that attract bees and butterflies, which is not going to make the Obama girls happy because they don't really like bees, but bees are good."
Michelle Obama, was joined by a group of students, FoodCorps leaders and the White House chefs and kitchen staff who use the products from the garden to cook. “They are so invested in this garden, because they use the garden every day, "the First Lady said. “They pull things out of that garden every day, they put it on our plates and we eat it for dinner and they serve it at big state dinners.”