- [Madeline] I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for decades and living with aches and pains.

So I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

And after learning better ways to use my body in the garden, it dawned on me "What would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardens, and helping their gardeners get garden fit?"

In season one, for all our guest gardeners, gardening was their life.

For season two, we're going to visit artists who are also passionate gardeners.

And for this lucky group, I'm so thrilled and excited to welcome this season's Garden Fitness Professional, Adam Schersten.

Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden.

That's our mission.

- [Announcer] "Garden Fit" is made possible in-part by Monrovia.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music fades] [whimsical music] - Adam, we're visiting Alice Waters.

She is really such an iconic figure in American culture.

She's famous for so many things.

She's a chef, a restaurateur, an author of 16 books, and an educator, which is pretty amazing.

But perhaps she's most famous for her farm-to-table movement.

I mean, she really was the one who introduced the idea that you have to eat healthy food that's naturally grown locally.

So that's why we're here because I'm so lucky to have this vegetable garden, and it is kind of the heart of our whole garden and very rewarding to be able to know you're eating healthy food that you've grown yourself.

- Yeah and I would say this is pretty local for you too, because I think I can see your house from here.

- [laughs] It is!

The other accomplishment of Alice's, which is amazing, is her restaurant, Chez Panisse.

She opened that restaurant in 1971, and it literally introduced not only her farm-to-table and healthy food, but she changed the way people cooked food, presented food, and I think it's going to be so interesting to talk to her about, really, the fresh concept that she created that made her restaurant truly an iconic one.

- Yeah.

- Perhaps one of the most interesting things we're going to learn about from Alice-- - There's more to this woman?

- Yeah, there is.

She has a really big program called the Edible Schoolyard Program, and this concept was started by a local school who asked her if she would put it in a garden.

She said, "I'll set up the garden, but I also want to set up a kitchen."

She really extended that concept, Adam, to say, "Well, why can't they learn all kinds of subjects outdoors?"

- Wow, right, so it's much more hands-on learning.

- Exactly.

- Way better than being stuffed in a classroom.

- Sitting in a classroom.

I think we're going to have an amazing day with her.

We'll learn a lot.

- I can't wait.

[upbeat music] - [Madeline] Well, you can't miss her house.

It has a victory garden in front of it.

- [Adam] It looks like it's doing very well.

- [Madeline] It is doing very well.

That looks like Alice.

Alice, so nice to see you again.

- Nice to see you.

Alice, this is Adam Schersten, Alice Waters!

- Nice to meet you.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- Wow, your victory garden!

- [Alice] My victory garden.

- [Madeline] It's so impressive to come up to a house and see a vegetable garden.

I think setting an example for your neighborhood, that you have this in front of the house, I think makes other people want to plant things in front of their home as well.

- Well it did.

I know that it's had an effect since, so I'm just leaving that victory garden sign.

But it's such a hopeful idea.

Even if you don't use everything, you can give it away.

- Absolutely, to share.

- [Alice] It's for the people in the neighborhood.

- So, Alice, just to ask you so this whole idea of farm-to-table, I mean, you really created that and changed the way our country, probably the world, eats.

How did that develop in your mind?

- Well, I went to France in 1965, and I was a student, and I had never been out of the country before.

And I arrived in Paris and it felt like a complete awakening.

It was such a beautiful city.

And then I saw the people waiting in line for a baguette.

I said, "What are they doing that for?"

And I stood in line for 20 minutes.

- And found out why they do that.

- [Alice] And found out why.

I went back the next day.

And it's only been in the last 50, 60 years that we have not eaten local food.

I know from that experience and my coming back here after, that it was going to take a lot to find food that had the taste that I'd experienced in France.

- And then you found it in your backyard.

- That's right.

- That's what's so amazing.

- Basically, I found that I was at the doorsteps of the local organic farmers and ranchers and fishers, all of the people who cared about the land and who cared about nourishment.

So once I had that relationship, I never have lost it.

All the people who are taking care of the land.

They are first, because if we didn't have them, I couldn't cook.

- We wouldn't have good food.

Right, that would be a horrible thing.

So what are some of the favorite things that you like to cook with?

I mean, there seem to be so many herbs in this garden.

- There are, there are herbs everywhere.

- Such a big thing.

- Sage, I love.

I love to fry sage, love it.

- Yeah.

- I love the aroma of it, too.

- Yeah, the smell of sage is fantastic.

- It's just-- - Oh, smell that.

That's heavenly.

That makes you hungry.

- It does.

- It makes you want to eat.

- Fried sage impressed me.

I didn't know that lovage would love it here.

- [Madeline] It's amazing.

- [Alice] Lovage is another herb, very strong-- - What's lovage?

- And we don't use it often.

It's got a very unique flavor.

- [Madeline] Gotta eat it.

- And it's like celery.

- [Adam] Wow, I was about to say tastes like celery.

- [Alice] Sort of celery.

And then the fennel.

- Which is so beautiful.

- Just loved.

- [Madeline] That grows here.

Just the picture of that in our mind makes, I think, such a difference in terms of how you feel about food.

It's so beautiful.

- [Alice] And then I tried blueberries and I didn't know what was gonna happen.

I didn't know whether the deer would like them too, but apparently they don't.

- Oh look, you've got a little caterpillar.

- Do I?

- Little swallowtail maybe, see him on the heel?

- Oh yes!

Oh, isn't that adorable?

He's so cute.

- He's a beauty.

- Yeah.

- It's a beauty.

- [Madeline] Oh look at that.

Don't you love that color?

- I can't believe it.

I'll leave you down here.

- [Adam] Beautiful.

- It's so sweet.

But the other thing that I think is lovely is sort of the way you've shaped it.

I mean, it's this whole space invites you in, and I think that's a little bit of how, the way you prepare food invites you in.

You once said something or I think I read this in one of your books that you really eat with your eyes.

- When you first do, you're looking at the food that comes.

You want to be invited in to taste.

- [Madeline] I love it.

- [Alice] And, uh, but I think beauty-- - Oh look at this.

- Is so important.

- [Madeline] And smell.

- [Adam] And stopping and smelling the flowers.

- All of the senses.

- Love it, yeah.

- Those are our pathways into our mind.

I've been really indoctrinated by Maria Montessori.

I'm a Montessori teacher.

- Oh cool!

- I trained in London.

- How nice.

- I thought what a great way to learn every subject is by doing, by actually using your whole body to experience the world.

It's so great that idea of education being interactive is so important, and I had the opportunity to start an edible schoolyard using Montessori's ideas at a school nearby.

And I'm gonna take you there.

- I can't wait to see that!

- Oh, that's very cool.

- There's a garden and a kitchen classroom.

Not to teach gardening or cooking per se, but to teach all of the academic subjects.

So when you're in the kitchen classroom, you may be studying the Middle East, but you're cooking pita bread and hummus and greens and you're eating the geography-- - Wow.

- Of that place.

- That's so great.

- That is so amazing.

- [Alice] And you never forget it when you've had that completely immersive experience as well.

- And it kind of, it connects you to the world in a way that's not just like a page-- - Once you've eaten the food of that country, you're very interested in going to that country.

- [Madeline] Absolutely!

- And you have a certain kind of respect for the people who cook that.

- Yeah.

- I want to show you my backyard, though.

- [Madeline] Okay, let's go!

- It looks like a beautiful walk.

- We'll follow you.

- Okay.

- [Madeline] Oh, yes, this is lovely.

- [Adam] I love the purple.

- Ooh, it's charming.

- Now the pansies, the little purple, are edible flowers.

This garden was so important to my daughter when she was very, very little.

And so I planted things especially for her and one of them are the wild strawberries.

- [Adam] Oh, yeah.

- [Alice] I have here fraise de bois.

I think I saw one that's ripe.

[laughs] - So they grow all year round, Alice?

- [Alice] No, they don't, but, um... - [Madeline] But the leaves are so pretty.

I'll give you.

- No, no, you have.

- No, I insist.

- But, I use lemon verbena to make a tea.

And I always find marjoram and rosemary.

Have a big bush of rosemary there.

- [Madeline] That's a lovely one.

Alice, so how important do you think herbs are to cooking?

- I think herbs are essential.

- [Madeline] Oh, really?

- I do, because they change what you make every day.

Let's say you're making a salad, and you can change the character of the salad by just putting some edible flowers on the top, which is so beautiful.

But the taste too, to chop a little lemon verbena in there and a little thyme.

Well, you know, I'm not really a gardener.

I'm a picker.

[laughs] - Can you tell us about the restaurant?

I mean, your restaurant, Chez Panisse, is just a landmark in the nation.

- Well, I never thought at the beginning, it would be anything but a place for my friends.

A French place.

Everybody had only one menu, just like you would do at home.

And we hoped people would like that four course meal.

- [Madeline] That was a brave concept.

- And what happened because we only had that one menu, people taste things that they'd never tasted before, and they remember them, and they look forward to coming in fall when we have Masumoto's peaches.

Or they know that you're only going to have salmon in the spring time.

- Tell us a bit about this, because I think that's such a wonderful kind of way of enjoying.

- It's the most important thing for me, because you cannot have ripe food if it's being brought from around the world.

It's picked when it's not ripe.

It's shipped, and it never has flavor in the way that I experience it picking it ripe off a tree.

That's something that we did at the restaurant that people loved.

We put the name of the farmer with the apple.

- [Madeline] Oh, how fantastic.

- Or people would come in and say, "Do you have Bob's salad?"

- Oh my goodness!

- [Adam] That's so cool!

- They are somebody's.

And we were able to connect them with our network.

And so that is really what the restaurant has been about.

We expanded to open the cafe upstairs, which has allowed us to buy a lot more from farmers.

- Which is wonderful.

- Which is great.

- Do you still do you just the one uh--?

- We just do the one menu downstairs for 52 years.

- Oh that's just brilliant.

- [Alice] We're having the 52nd birthday.

- [Madeline] Oh, really, that's exciting!

- [Alice] But the fact that people trust us, it's so, um, uh, I guess reinforcing of the idea of eating together, eating the same food, whether it's at home at your table or at school.

And that's what we do again at the Edible Schoolyard, after these students cook the food.

- [Madeline] They eat?

- [Alice] They all sit around three tables of ten and they taste it.

And it's so-- - Wow.

- Enjoy it together, isn't that cool?

- Creating community around food.

- It is.

- And I see some great, uh, fruits and stuff in your backyard for picking.

- Well, again, I planted trees that I would really use.

Uh, for instance, the fig tree over there.

I use the leaves all the time for wrapping around fish and baking it.

- The fig leaves?

- Yes.

- I love that idea!

- It perfumes the fish.

But it's also beautiful just to put fruit on a plate.

And this is a persimmon tree, a Japanese one.

This is bay leaves right there.

- Wow!

- That's bay leaves?

- [Alice] That's bay leaves.

- [Adam] I didn't even know it came that big.

I thought that was a shrub.

- No, it gets very, very big.

And then, of course, I can't eat anything from my redwood tree.

- It's majestic, yeah, yeah.

- But she is a beauty.

- Oh, my.

- [Alice] I have a lemon tree and a lime.

As you can see, I have mint everywhere.

- [Madeline] Yes, you do have a lot of mint.

- [Alice] Mint here, mint there.

But it was very hard to find the right herbs that would live under my redwood tree.

- I bet.

- Because it's got a very acidic presence in my garden.

- [Madeline] No, it's fun.

And you have your precious sage here too.

- Oh, yes and sage.

- I'm sure you don't have enough of that either.

- Never.

- [Adam] Alice, I love from our conversations what you've been telling me about your daily routines and how you keep your body in shape, and how you're a picker and not a gardener, I love that.

And I look around at your backyard, and I see all these beautiful fruit trees with fruit that's coming.

And maybe you would indulge me in talking about how we as people pick fruit from trees from up above.

There's some real treasures up in the trees.

- Definitely.

- And this is often one of the things that really goes first for people as they start to age or their body starts to wear out, is the shoulder and the ability to really reach up.

And so I just want to show a little bit of how we can reach, and then how a little routine to kind of keep the shoulders in nice mobility.

Often, people, they get really strong in the elevation and these muscles here that pull the shoulder up.

And so if you put your hand on my shoulder, what I want you to practice here is, yeah, pulling down.

Hold it and now just go up and down.

Yeah, exactly, that's great.

And retraining that arm and shoulder to work together.

And often when we reach up with the arm, we really want the shoulder to come down and create some space here.

So restoring that rhythm of arm and shoulder blade.

And so then the next thing is just really this beautiful little-- - What is this?

- Arm sequence, it has four steps.

The first step is one and it's your pinkies and your elbows together.

So try and get your elbows together on the inside, that's one.

Two is bringing the fingers to the chest and the back of the hands together so you can bring the elbows out.

That's two, great.

Three is straight out in front and four is sweeping up and around back to one.

- [Madeline] Oh wow, it's a dance.

- And then we go one, then two, exactly.

And we go to three and we go to four.

And this is just restoring some of that rhythm.

- That's so cool.

- And that's it.

And that will really help restore-- - Does that make you shoulders feel better?

- Yeah it does.

I love it when exercise is just part of your day.

You know, not having to go to that gym.

That it's just walking out the front door.

- Part of living.

- Part of living.

- If we were outside-- - I wanna see the neighborhood, see what's growing.

- Yeah, right.

- You walk every morning.

- Every morning I walk.

- I know she's a big walker.

- Out the door at 7:30.

Just out the door.

- So you could see everything.

- I could be any place on the planet.

I'm out the door.

- I think that's so cool.

- That's so great.

Yeah, if we were outside, still playing regularly, climbing trees, picking fruit, we would be, yeah, using everything.

- I played outside of my house every single day.

When I grew up in New Jersey and we didn't come in until we had to come in for dinner.

- Yeah.

- But we were climbing trees and we were falling in love with nature.

And I know that my parent's victory garden inspired the one I have right out in my front yard.

- [Adam] The one you have out front, yeah.

- But they had it their whole lives.

Every child wants to be outside.

- So now can we go to the Edible Schoolyard?

- Let's go!

- Let's go see it.

- Let's go.

[whimsical music] - [Madeline] Alice, we are finally at the Edible Schoolyard.

I'm so excited!

And perhaps we could start by you telling us how you got this concept.

- 28 years ago.

- Wow.

- The principal of this school, Neil Smith, called me on the phone and he said, "Could you come and help beautify the school?"

And I came over here to this vacant lot.

There was nothing here.

A few trees way in the back, big trees.

And I said, "Oh, I see, you could make a garden classroom there."

And then I saw this building and I said, "Well, maybe if we could make that into a kitchen classroom."

And so Neil said, "I'll get back to you."

I said, "Neil, it's all or nothing."

- Right.

[laughs] - Right.

[laughs] - Because that's just the way I am.

And he said, "We'll do it."

He called me later and he said, "We'll do it."

And almost instantly we had help from parents and neighbors.

And we cleaned this whole area.

We made the garden first, and then we found a wonderful cook whose name is Esther Cook.

- How perfect.

- She was an artist.

And she set up the kitchen classroom.

But I can't say enough about how it, that the nature worked its magic, and how food really engaged the students, empowered them.

- So now, 28 years later, how many schools have adopted the Edible Schoolyard project?

- Well, on our network right now we have 6200 schools.

- [Madeline] Isn't that wonderful?

So will you take us inside and-- - I will.

- Show us what it's really like to be in an edible schoolyard?

- Let's go.

- Looks so beautiful.

[whimsical music] - Please come in.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness, I love this.

This is great!

- Very cool!

- This is where the students come right at the beginning to learn what the lesson is going to be for the day.

- So how did this structure get here?

- There's always been kind of structure that was here.

But when it fell apart, I said, "Let's make it like the Pantheon in Rome.

Let's have an open area at the top so we can always look up and see this.

The clouds, the sun.

And the architect said, "I'd love to do that."

- Fantastic, so even in the center, you have such a combination of vegetables.

- [Alice] Well, there's the tomato plant there without tomatoes, just like in my garden.

- [Adam] Right, just some flowers.

- [Alice] And a kale that looks like the bugs are getting to it.

- [Madeline] Well, that makes the bugs happy.

And then, is that corn?

- A little bit of corn.

- Wow.

- There.

And chives, but it is changing all the time.

- [Madeline] It's charming with the little rocks around it.

I love it, It's such a nice picture.

- Yeah, it's meant to be a place of conversation.

- [Madeline] So what type of instruction or classes happen in this space, Alice?

- Well, it could really be, obviously, a botany class, a science class.

They've had some amazing classes about climate and water use.

Um, but they discuss what they're going to be doing in this circle, and then they go out in little groups to do, maybe it's weeding the garden.

But maybe it's doing a little science experiment.

Every subject can be taught in this garden.

Obviously, it could be an art class.

That could be painting or drawing, and it certainly could be a music class where they're playing music out here and it has been.

- So I see a lot has been gathered today already.

- [Alice] Oh, well, I just saw these beautiful eggs.

Can you believe blue eggs?

- Big!

- And the chickens come out of their coop and they're free range through the whole garden all day.

- Really?

- When the kids are here.

And some of the kids just pick up those chickens.

Know all their names.

Which ones have blue eggs?

You know, which ones have brown spotted ones.

- Oh, I love that.

- Wow.

- And I can't tell you which chickens, but they can.

- Yeah, they know that.

- Well, they're their chickens.

- And this is just a few things.

But cilantro is a big herb that we grow.

And rosemary, of course.

And these beautiful-- - Oh, that's so beautiful.

So lush.

- Little gems.

And, oh, there's a cucumber.

- Another treasure in there.

- Good, you can take these into the kitchen.

- And I see one more thing.

- Oh, my favorite!

- A staple, this must be very French!

- This is a staple.

But this year, because we've had so much rain.

The garlic is so sweet.

We have a garlic festival every year at Chez Panisse.

- [Madeline] Really?

- We know the Chinese proverb, "garlic is as good as ten mothers."

- Wow.

- Isn't that a good one?

- That is a good one.

- Garlic is a favorite.

I can't cook without garlic in my vinaigrette.

But it's so great that they're growing it here.

- Oh, it's wonderful.

- And a lot of it.

- Alice, thank you so much for this amazing day to see your victory garden, to learn so much about all of the things that you have done for our culture to make really a healthier, more, I guess, educational and enjoyable eating experience.

It's been really a treat for us.

So we thank you.

- Oh, it's my pleasure.

I mean, it really is.

I can't think of any kind of work to do that is like this.

Reinforcing kids' enthusiasm.

- Yeah.

- It's wonderful.

- [Alice] It's beautiful, it is.

- So what are we going to do with this?

- I think we should just drop it off with the kids in the kitchen.

- Great!

- Bon appétit!

[all laughing] [gentle music] - [Narrator] Get "Garden Fit" with us.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music fades] [bright music] - [Announcer] "Garden" Fit is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[whimsical music] [whimsical music fades] [bright music]