We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kimani Anku. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kimani below.
Kimani, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Welcome to Gardening & Beats-Gardening, Healthy Eating, and Music! Gardening and Beats is a full-fledged global gardening coach service specializing in helping build new gardens and helping new gardeners/farmers grow their own food using an organic and spiritual approach to gardening.
Kimani, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
KIMANI Anku is a DMV native who found a love of farming/gardening and producing his own food over twelve years ago through unconventional means. He has been through some seasons and has come out better and stronger. So much better, in fact, that he’s turned his passion into a thriving garden coaching service where he teaches folks how to grow food. In his free time (some still don’t know when he sleeps), he engages in youth programming and leads his services to fight food insecurity in Prince Georges County. He recently acquired 3 acres of land in Virginia outside of Richmond and is now taking his gardening skills to the next level by starting a farm to produce food for the community.
I actually created this after falling into a bad state of depression and suicide. My mom my first garden coach lead me to start my first garden as free therapy and it helped me become better, mentally, physically, and if I can go through this and come out a winner and heal and I thought it would be good to help others so I started gardening and beats to help folks grow their own food and now this became bigger than me now, so I can travel the world speaking and helping folks, so I would say that;s where the global garden coach came into play.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Gardening actually saved my life! I’m not kidding. It really did. About 12 years ago now, I was in a lousy space. Wasnt eating right and becoming unhealthy. This is how it started when I lost my great job working in television because that is my background, and my degree is in TV/Film Production. Plus, I had to file bankruptcy, sell my car to my mom for $1, clear out my bank account, and almost lost my house. From there, I fell into a bad state of depression to the point I considered suicide. But, as you can see, that didn’t happen, and I thank god and Mom every day for that! Speaking of my Mom, she was the one that said I should start a garden. I didn’t want to hear that. The little thing I didn’t know was my mom, and her family were farmers, and I found that out after my mom had passed a few years ago. So it made sense now that I’m gardening now. My mom was planting a seed in me, and I didn’t even know and wasn’t interested at the time. I was the one who paid the neighbor kids to cut my grass because I didn’t want to be outside. My mom kept pushing me to start a garden, and after all, I wasn’t doing anything but eating junk food and sleeping all day. Finally, she said, “baby boy begin with something you like and go from there, and I’ll bet you’ll fall in love with gardening. So after much hesitation, I agree to start a garden, but I told her I only wanted to do strawberries and chives. Can you believe the same strawberries and chives are still growing in my yard to this day? Wow. So I ran down to my local big box store; I can’t remember which one and pick up a raised garden bed, strawberry, chives starter plants, and some soil. I tell you, I have no clue what I was doing. I got started, and after a week, I notice the stuff was growing, and I was so surprised because I told my mom this stuff isn’t going to grow. Weeks later, I was outside every day in the garden singing and playing music for my little garden, and something about that felt really good and therapeutic. I nearly lost my mind when I saw blooms on both the strawberries and chives, and of course, I didn’t know what was going on with them, but I let my mom know. She let me know that blooms on the strawberries were getting ready to set fruit, and the chives are more than prepared to eat and enjoy. I was shocked, and as the strawberries bloom turned into fruit, my depression slowly disappeared. I didn’t have any crazy thoughts about killing myself because I wanted to be outside and tend to my garden. Finally, life was going well, that it was now time to give up the junk food, stay out of bed all day, and look for another job. As the garden was growing and I was eating fresh strawberries daily, my body was feeling well, so I decided to go to the Doctor as the new happy gardener. Every man fears right! The visit wasn’t good for me as all the junk food and not eating right was causing some concerns for my health. The Doctor said I was borderline diabetic, have possible high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and needed to lose weight. I was terrified and stayed calm and hoping that I wouldn’t go back down my dark past of depression. I told the Doctor to give me three months and trust me I would be good. He agreed. I went home, studied all those diseases, and went to work. The first thing I did was start a raw food diet and change my diet, and then I started researching and learning my growing zone to grow more food and be outside more to exercise more. Three months later, I had a late summer garden with a few more items that I would have never eaten, like eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. I learned how to cook and prepare them and when I went back to the Doctor, I was all good. No underlining conditions and I lost a lot of weight and joked with me about that. And on that day, that’s when I realized gardening, eating healthy, and music saved my life. That Doctor gave me my first speaking engagement speaking to folks about beating depression, changing their diets for the better, and how gardening, eating, and preparing healthy foods can change that. Ever since, I been on a mission to use my story and found my purpose of gardening to change people lives, especially young people. I co-founded the HYPE Community Garden (Healthy Young People Everywhere) with the NAACP of MD five years teaching youth in my community. I also started my own nonprofit, Little Green People, where I teach the 3 to 6 years old gardening during the summer with my neighborhood school. And this summer, I was contacted by the Hillside Youth Connection program to teach a two-day gardening workshop with a few teens who learned how to start a garden with seeds from one of the many brand sponsors I have now. They learned how to clean up gardening beds and learned how to harvest and prepare foods from the garden. I also volunteer at the KIPP DC WEBB campus garden when I can, and in 2022, I’ve agreed to help the KIPP DC BENNING campus start a rooftop garden.
And just last year, I’ve started a gardening business where I’m coaching folks on how to grow and maintain a garden to not only be self-sufficient but to find ways to change their lives for the better. And the journey has been unbelievable as tennis shoe brands, other food and gardening brands, cable networks, and colleges are reaching out to me to tell my story. And being the introvert that I’m, I said buckle up and let’s go for a ride and see how this shakes out.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
The main way I built my audience up on social media by telling my LIVE on IG every chance I got as well creating content that shows regular folks how to garden on a budget and how to fix healthy recipes with the food they grow. This how into got me in front of people to paid speaking engagements at churches, schools, nonprofits, hospital and other online outlets. I also created the 2022 webby award winning podcast for blak gardener talk in the sustainability and environmental category. This podcast aims to inspire all people to grow their food and fall back love with the land, but with a focus on black and brown gardeners/farmers all over the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gardeningandbeats.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gardeningandbeats
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kimanianku
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gardeningnbeats
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl-cVJeNywCwo-Mo6I4sgNQ
- Other: tiktok https://tiktok.com/gardeningandbeats
Image Credits
all images by Kimani Anku