As a pioneer in the realm of heirloom seeds, seed saving and preservation, sustainable agricultural practices and edible gardening, edible gardens ® is passionate about helping you grow massive amounts of healthy and delicious food, with original heirloom seeds and organic growing methods in your own edible garden.

Our educational resources, gardening products, online lessons and live events can support you in growing and preparing your own food, saving seeds and preserving your healthy food choices.

It is our mission at edible gardens to preserve these ancient cultural and genetic treasures by reconnecting a new generation of backyard gardeners and food enthusiasts to these special seed varieties from around the world.

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edible gardens is a place that belongs to all of us…

it is the gift that each of us has been born into.

It is a healthy, fertile and abundant garden of biodiversity which has existed for as long as human beings have been growing food, over 12,000 years. Nearly every staple crop grown by modern people we owe to the wisdom of our anscestors. It was the indigenous cultures around the world who used natural plant breeding and organic growing methods to cultivate over 80,000 varieties of plants used for food. It is these heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables that have made our existence possible for thousands of years – this is the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

Sadly, in the last 100 years, humanity has lost much of this great cultural heritage.

Nearly 90% of our food varieties have gone extinct.

The erosion of genetic diversity and the extinction of these precious seed varieties is perhaps the greatest threat to our long-term food security and survival. It is the very basis of the world’s food production that is at stake. The good news is that it is easy to get involved…

Grow your own Food and Save Seeds!

Seeds are our greatest living treasure and represent a precious and sacred element of the gift of life, which each generation passes on to future generations. And now these seeds are entrusted to you, to cultivate and enjoy, and to save some seeds to grow for next season. We invite you to join in the creative act of maintaining the earth and her rich diversity of life.

It is YOU, the backyard gardener,

who is the hero in the struggle to preserve

the rich biodiversity of the planet.

Al Gore stated that,”the loss of biodiversity was the single greatest threat faced by humanity”.

In less than four decades, the corporate take-over of the food system has managed to eliminate 95% of the world’s seed supply and has claimed patent ownership rights on much of the remaining seed stock required to feed the world.

• What kind of world would it be if every seed was patented?

• What if farmers and food growers had no options of where to get their seeds?

• What if 5 companies in the world controlled all our food and all our health choices?

• What if there were no natural varieties remaining?

Our only option is to save seeds…

“Heirloom seeds are old-time varieties, and they are some of the most flavorful, interesting and nutritious varieties available anywhere.”

said William Martin, who founded edible gardens in 2003. “They’re open pollinated, which means they are not crossed or hybrids- you can grow them and same them year after year. They’re some of the few remaining natural seed left, and they exist in their natural forms, and they are from all over the world.”

Martin, who is a certified master gardener, spent most of his adult life in a quite different line of work. “I am a filmmaker and media producer by trade,” he said. “Anita Roddick, who owns The Body Shop and lives here in town, she has all these projects that the Body Shop has funded around the world, really amazing community fair trade projects where they are sourcing products and putting the resources back into the community.  I did years of film work for Anita, putting an emotional edge on these big corporate positioning pieces and on their live events – what I witnessed is that she really set the bar in terms of demonstrating how business can be a force for good in this world and can help to restore and re-invigorate the communities where the business has it’s operations. Anita and her husband Gordon really walked their talk and their work continues to touch countless lives around the world.”

Dame Anita Roddick, Activist & Founder of The Body Shop

“At one point she sent me to India on this assignment and said, “go visit our project in India, Tedy Paper, then I want you to go check out this seed farm while you are there, get to know this wise person Dr.Vandana Shiva, and find out what the story is.”

Mr.Martin went to Asia and traveled for over a year, and quickly discovered things that changed his life. “Because of who Mrs.Roddick was, and the profound depth of her impact on many of these people’s lives, I started to become aware of the doors that had been opened to me because of my relationship with her. It was at this time I was introduced to a group of people, including Dr.Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar and Gandhi’s grand-daughter Ela.  For weeks these wise beings took me under their wings and opened my eyes to the tragedy of bio-piracy, the plundering of our common genetic heritage and the corporate take-over and ownership of the world’s seed supplies. Under their tutelage, I grew lifetimes in a few short weeks with a profound understanding of the importance of our precious genetic diversity to ensure food choices and sovereignty for future generations.  I am convinced that if Gandhi were alive today, his vehicle for demonstration would be represented in the seed, as it was the spinning wheel years ago. As you read this, nations around the world are being plundered with the transfer of their collective seeds to corporate ownership and patents. Entire continents are fast losing the capacity for self-determination as, without open-pollinated seeds, we lose the capacity to feed ourselves, our self-sufficiency.”

“Get to know this wise person Dr.Vandana Shiva,

and find out what the story is…”

Martin had been a highly sought-after creative producer, working around the world with top authors and business leaders, including John Denver,  Anthony Robbins, Body-Shop owner and Santa Barbara resident Anita Roddick, and his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

His publishing company, WisdomKeepers, had gone on to publish several audio and video programs with the Dalai Lama over the last two decades , and in fact, it was an encounter with His Holiness that planted the original seed of inspiration for this seed-saving enterprise.

“I had this amazing opportunity to work closely with His Holiness on his US tour a few years back. During a visit to the Botanical Gardens in Tempe, the Dalai Lama mentioned that culture is represented by more than just people and language and art – it’s also the seeds and plants and all the other living beings with whom we share a sense of place.” Later that same day, during a recording session back at the hotel, The Dalai Lama pulled Mr.Martin to the side of the room and told him directly, “at this moment, many ancient civilizations are going extinct around the world. Each of us must take a personal responsibility to ensure the preservation of this unique cultural and spiritual heritage – nowhere is this more important than with seeds and seed-saving.”   “Things like that tend to get your attention”, said William Martin while reflecting on his journey, “after that, everything just sort of converged.”

“Things like that tend to get your attention.”

Trying to return to life as normal proved to be somewhat difficult for the young entreprenuer. “I started to see the connections everywhere. It became impossible to ignore the plight of the seeds – the writing is on the wall for us and for future generations who will depend on this biodiversity”, said William Martin.  “While I continue to focus on my media work, the lens is now directed at the issues of food, seeds, ancient cultures and backyard gardening. So many people in this country know nothing about the tragic loss of our natural seeds, because it is kind of a silent thing that is happening – the loss of genetic diversity in our food supply. It is one of the single most important issues facing humanity, and how few of us are aware of it. All we see in the stores are the vegetables, but who has their hands on the seeds – this is the really important question.”

After visiting the Indian seed farm, Martin spent the rest of the year traveling through Asia, collecting and trading with small-scale farmers around the world, the heirloom seed varieties that would be the basis for his seed project in Santa Barbara. He now has begun marketing the seeds in small kits organized around a theme. The first set of heirloom seeds to become a kit was collected in Thailand, gathered on visits to numerous small farms in the North, and the kit is called “Thai Garden.” He said, “Everyone is so focused on Wall Street these days, but the real story of our times is playing out in the garden. The loss of these amazing varieties is both tragic and irrevocable, and the consequences of the corporate ownership of our seed genetics is staring us in the face.”

“We started edible gardens to ensure that the remaining natural seeds are grown and preserved in millions of backyard gardens around the world, instead of being replaced by corporate-owned genetically modified versions. It is a growing network of backyard gardeners and food enthusiasts who are the heroes in the struggle to save the biodiversity of the earth. This is the ultimate sovereignty, to maintain these varieties of seeds for food production and self-sufficiency. It is our absolute responsibility – future generations will depend on this biodiversity.”

All of Martins seeds are produced organically, with — so far — no contamination from genetically modified seeds and other horrors spawned by the union of agribusiness and the chemical industry.

Edible Gardens operates a biodiversity-preservation seed farm, located in the heart of the agricultural district in Santa Barbara. He has a row of heirloom tomatoes growing alongside the wall of a barn built in the 1800′s. Unlike the serene calm out in the fields, inside the barn is a bee-hive of activity he calls the Creative Greenhouse, with interns and staff buzzing around a world-class facility consisting of video production suites, a classroom, an extensive horticultural library, a seed bank, and an internet development studio.

Martin is quite consciously a part in a movement that he considers a revolution. It is based on opting-out of the industrial mindset – a mechanized system of food production that values only high yield and uniformity and compromises of the health of the workers and consumers — it’s about doing what is necessary to green your own life and embrace the principles of biodiversity, organic growing and long-term sustainability. “It is a celebration of what is delicious and wonderful and amazing about being alive”, he adds.

“I have grown out over six hundred varieties of heirloom seeds. High yield and flavor is something I look for,” said Martin, “not for profitability but because I want people to have an amazing experience growing a successful garden – I want people to be able to grow tons of really tasty, healthy food. Martin adds, “at the core of it, I consider us to be an activist communications and marketing company. And the seeds are the stars. I went though hundreds of varieties, grew them out here on this land, and across the country, and we selected and breed the ones that grew the best in a lot of different growing conditions.”

“I’ve been studying with some of the top organic seed breeders and growers in this country, and what you discover is how much there is to know about soil nutrition and seed quality, germination, pollination, yields and natural companion solutions to pests. All of this wisdom is just essential in order to have truly sustainable agriculture. Local, small scale food gardens is a huge part of the solution – and it’s so easy.”

Working in collaboration with other organic farmers and seed professionals has helped to ensure we have the highest quality seeds suitable for a wide range of growing environments.”

Martin is intensely involved with education, making videos, teaching classes, speaking at events and guiding students around his farm and the various garden projects his group has established around the country.

“The farmer has been pushed, along with small to medium-scale agricultural production, to the fringes of society. But in truth, it’s the local farmers who have so much to share about the land and about how to grow food – they’re the ones who will really help to sustain us long-term. I think the times are coming back when we will all need to be learning and discovering how to grow our food locally, how to preserve our topsoil, and how to sustain ourselves when the cost of oil makes it cost-prohibitive to ship products and produce thousands of miles – we are going to need an entire nation of backyard food farmers.”

One of Martins principle concerns is peak oil, the point after which we will have taken more oil than is left.

“We are totally organic here, but everything — plastics, running the tractors, shipping seeds, shipping your agrigoods thousands of miles from the farm to the table — it all revolves around petroleum. On our small-scale operation here, we don’t use pesticides or any chemicals – but on the larger, global scale, agribusiness is producing seeds that are all dependent upon petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Round-Up Ready is a complete system: you plant the seed, and that seed doesn’t even begin to sprout until it gets its shot of petroleum. Its not even food. Everything in the soil is dead.”

“And the science backs us up…researchers have been finding fungi and micro cilia that are specific to each plant and that some of the companion micro cilia can spread out as much as two hundred yards, getting water and food. It’s totally astonishing what is happening in the soil. The modern tragedy is the chemicals that we are putting down is killing off this vast, intricate structure. All of our bees are dying, the soil is depleted, and all these different things that we depend on for life, which is an invisible web, and, to me, the seed is the crux of the whole thing – without it, we don’t eat.”

“The really amazing thing is that, at the same moment, it is such an exciting time,” Martin said. “some of our heirloom seeds have been around for 10,000 years, but we are only now rediscovering some of these amazing herbs and vegetables and the ancient wisdom which accompanies these old-time varieties – it is a knowledge that indigenous people have known all along. Together, we are reclaiming our collective heritage, the sustenance of life shared with all of creation.

Our children are going to depend on how well we steward the resources of seed, soil and water, and pass them on to future generations…”

Through our edible gardens projects and SeedKeepers Programs, we are working to co-develop seed farming, seed banks and seed preservation in communities around the world. It is our mission at edible gardens to preserve these ancient cultural and genetic treasures by reconnecting a new generation of backyard gardeners and food enthusiasts to these special seed varieties from around the world.

Contact is at www.ediblegardens.com, or call us at 805-576-7499.

We look forward to hearing about your gardening adventures…