Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- An Ogden couple has turned a passion for gardening into Foodscaping Utah, a nonprofit that encourages others to grow their own produce.
- After experiencing a personal transformation through gardening, they now advocate for incorporating fresh vegetables into daily meals.
OGDEN — An Ogden couple, once indifferent to vegetables to downright detesting them, is now among their biggest cheerleaders and runs a nonprofit trying to help people grow their own.
Holly Trimble grew up thinking vegetables were "fine."
"But they were never the main attraction," she said.
John Trimble says he hated them.
"Onions particularly I hated," he said, "but tomatoes (as well)."
Even after John Trimble was diagnosed as diabetic when he was 21, his palette didn't change.
"We would eat them, but I didn't like it," he said.
Their tastes changed when they planted a small plot in a community garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they were living at the time.
John Trimble recalls an heirloom tomato from that garden.
"That tomato just blew me away. The flavor that it had. It just tasted like tomato, in a good way but like magnified 1,000 times," he said.
Large Utah garden
When the couple moved to Ogden — John Trimble now teaches Spanish at Weber State University — and bought a home, they planted their own garden.
"We started with a small garden in the back and then we just piece by piece started taking out lawn and replacing it with food everywhere we could," Holly Trimble said.
Eventually, the garden took over the front yard.
Four years ago, they weighed their entire harvest and calculated they grew over 1,000 pounds of produce.
One 4-by-10 raised bed alone produced 140 pounds the following year.
They said having a garden in the front of their home reminds them to include vegetables in their meals and use them as more than just side dishes.
"You see it every day. It becomes part of your daily life as opposed to an afterthought," John Trimble said.
"It's changed the way that we cook," Holly Trimble said. "So we're always 'well, what do we have in the garden' first instead of 'what meat do you have in the freezer?'"
In 2017, they established Foodscaping Utah to help people follow their example.
"I think a lot of people want to grow food are interested by the idea but need a little help getting started," he said.
"It's been such a transformative (influence on my) health personally for me," he said.
"We have two daughters, and I really, it means a lot to me that they grow up knowing what high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables taste like," he said.
For more information, go to foodscapingutah.org.
