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The White House
Office of the First Lady
For Immediate Release

Remarks by The First Lady at The White House Kitchen Garden Harvest Event

East Room

3:35 P.M. EDT

MRS. OBAMA:  I’m excited that you guys could be here.  I really am.  Unfortunately -- we usually do our garden harvest where?  Outside in the White House Kitchen Garden.  But the weather is bad, and we didn’t -- wouldn’t want you guys to get soaked.  We didn’t want to put you in inclement weather.  So we had some folks go down and harvest everything -- all of the vegetables you see here were harvested this morning from the garden.

So we’re going to do the fun part today, and we’re going to cook -- chop, cook, eat, celebrate, okay?  Is that okay with you guys? 

CHILDREN:  Yes.

MRS. OBAMA:  I’m excited about it too.  But we’re also celebrating the fifth anniversary of Let’s Move!  And one of the things that I issued was a challenge -- I called it my Gimme Five Challenge.  Have you all heard of that?  I’m challenging folks across the country to do five new healthy things.  And when we planted the White House garden earlier in the season, we planted five new vegetables and challenged other people to do the same.  And we also got some help from our friends at the National Pollinator Garden Network.

Now, do you guys know about pollinator gardens?  Tell me something about pollinator gardens.  Don’t be shy.  Why are they important?

CHILD:  Because they pass pollen around --

MRS. OBAMA:  They do.  And as a result, it helps our food grow.  One out of every three bits of food that we take in this country is the result of a pollinator garden somewhere.  So if we don’t make sure we have enough of those gardens for pollinators like butterflies -- didn’t you have a sign for butterflies?  You were supposed to do something when I said “butterflies.”  (Laughter.)  Okay.  Butterflies, bats, bees, birds -- all of those, they get attracted to the gardens, and then they go and sprinkle life around so that food grows. 

So we planted a pollinator garden in the White House Kitchen Garden last year, but we challenged others to do the same.  So there is the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge that the folks from the Pollinator Network have issued so that we get millions of more pollinator gardens planted out there around the country so that we don’t lose these important pollinating species.

So you know a little something about pollinator gardens now, right?  All right.  That’s good.  You guys are ready to do some work, right?  All right.  Well, let’s get to work.  This is the best part.  Let’s move!  Come on, let’s go! 

END  
3:38 P.M. EDT