FOOD & RECIPES

From disliking vegetables to loving them, one Utah couple runs nonprofit to help people grow their own

Oct 20, 2024, 10:30 PM | Updated: 10:46 pm

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).” 

John Trimble and his wife, Holly Trimble, run a nonprofit to help others grow their own vegetables. (KSL TV)

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 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,” John Trimble 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. 

Holly Trimble and her husband, John Trimble, have a garden the size of their front yard. The couple also runs a nonprofit to help others grown their own vegetables. (Peter Rosen, KSL TV)

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 feet by 10 feet 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,” John Trimble 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,” John Trimble said.

For more information, go to foodscapingutah.org. 

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From disliking vegetables to loving them, one Utah couple runs nonprofit to help people grow their own