While I have been "celebrating" the recession in Silicon Valley, some of my buddies in Arizona have been working on a new product. Long-time friend and client Marc Williams of Bobcat Wizards and a team of trusted advisors will launch Arizona-based Eleanor’s Garden, the only complete home gardening kit on the market, next week at the International Garden Show in Chicago.
Eleanor's Garden is entrepreneurship at its best -- everyone working for equity, bootstrapping the start, and bringing innovation bravely forward during a down time.
The product will be available for 2009 Christmas and holiday gifts as a gift pack that will include the best-selling book, All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew, tomato seeds and peat pellets for growing tomato seedlings, and a product registration card. Gift pack recipients can register their product at www.EleanorsGarden.com or by calling 1-877-GROW-VEG (1-877-476-9834), and telling the company when and where to ship an Eleanor's Garden Basic Kit before their local growing season starts.
Mel Bartholomew's book describes a system for growing a different fruit or vegetable in each square foot of a raised-bed garden The 8-square-foot garden is designed to yield a fresh and healthy salad for a typical family every week throughout the growing season, in the back yard, porch, balcony, roof-top or under a sunny window.  And the modular system is expandable, both vertically and horizontally so you can grow your gardening space with additional basic units.
 
The drainage system is continuous from bed to bed, allowing users to contain, collect and reuse drain water from a central drainage point.
       
Few people know more about dirt than Marc Williams, who invented Eleanor’s Garden. A serial entrepreneur since childhood, Mr. Williams currently heads Bobcat Wizards, Inc. (www.bobcatwizards.com), a confined area excavation and drainage firm that uses innovative business systems for maximum productivity. His plan for expanding Bobcat Wizards had to be put on hold when the construction market tanked, so Mark has applied his skills to a new problem--eating locally and eating well.
 
“It’s time for a product like this,” says Williams.  “Unpredictable food prices deprive many families of fresh produce, and even people who can afford supermarket produce are trying to eat organic, locally grown food for environmental reasons.”

"I am hoping Eleanor’s Garden will create a long relationship with its users. For many people, gardening is a daily meditation.  For others, it is a way to control the food supply, providing fresh food with an intimate relationship to its source. I hope people will continue their gardens and even pass them on. “

Marc's garden kits are named for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose Victory Garden on the White House lawn ignited a movement that he hopes can be re-ignited during the current crisis and transformed into a permanent movement.