Back-yard bounty StarTribune.com:
"Mark Campbell has been gardening since he planted a lily of the valley in second grade. But he never planned to make money from it. Or to spend six months living in a tent so he could study sustainable agriculture. Or to fill his Edina yard with so many fruit trees and hostas that he'd need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.
In many ways, Campbell is an accidental gardener.
He's the kind of guy who worked a stint at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on a whim. 'I went out to buy apples one day and got a job,' he said."
And it was a love affair with herbs that led him to start a garden-based business in the mid- 1980s.
"I was way into herbs," he said. "I had 13 kinds of basil. I had edible flowers and heirloom tomatoes. I was growing back then the varieties you see now."
The "oddball" offerings from his garden attracted the attention of Lucia Watson, who bought them for her Minneapolis restaurant. And somehow Campbell ended up supplementing his herb business by cooking at Lucia's Restaurant.
"Mark Campbell has been gardening since he planted a lily of the valley in second grade. But he never planned to make money from it. Or to spend six months living in a tent so he could study sustainable agriculture. Or to fill his Edina yard with so many fruit trees and hostas that he'd need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.
In many ways, Campbell is an accidental gardener.
He's the kind of guy who worked a stint at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on a whim. 'I went out to buy apples one day and got a job,' he said."
And it was a love affair with herbs that led him to start a garden-based business in the mid- 1980s.
"I was way into herbs," he said. "I had 13 kinds of basil. I had edible flowers and heirloom tomatoes. I was growing back then the varieties you see now."
The "oddball" offerings from his garden attracted the attention of Lucia Watson, who bought them for her Minneapolis restaurant. And somehow Campbell ended up supplementing his herb business by cooking at Lucia's Restaurant.