Mud Baron
Mud Baron is a youth gardening advocate who has spent years building school gardens that grow food and flowers around Los Angeles, from LAUSD campuses to John Muir High School in Pasadena. His mantra, as the Los Angeles Times put it in 2012: "Kids who grow broccoli eat broccoli." He calls school gardens "the engines of environmental empathy."
At John Muir High School he worked with students on the campus farm that became Muir Ranch, where students grew produce and cut flowers and sold them through a CSA and at farmers markets, including Hollywood's. By 2015 he was the farm's project director, and he made a public art project of it: student-grown bouquets piled onto the heads of friends and strangers and photographed, a statement for "more flowers in more places."
Before school gardens he apprenticed as a cabinetmaker while living on a farm run by peace activist Art Gish, and worked as an assistant to Sierra Club leader David Brower.
- Known for
- School gardens; Muir Ranch; student-grown flowers
- @mudbaron
- instagram.com/mudbaron
Sources: Los Angeles Times, "Mud Baron plants what he preaches" (Apr 2012), via 4LAKidsNews · AOL, flower crown project (2015). Profiles use public interviews and published information only. Is this you and something's wrong or missing? Tell us.