Bobbi talks endlessly about her special hobby!
We know them from their role in the spotlight. But what keeps the famous Netherlands out of the spotlight? In the new Glamial we quiz Bobbi Eden about her greatest passion. Because guess what? In addition to creative hobbies such as crocheting and sewing, Bobbi also has a green thumb!
New hobby
“I don’t naturally have green fingers. I used to live in an apartment with my parents. With a large balcony, full of pleasant plants. In our previous house I sometimes did something with strawberries and mint, but the love for vegetable gardening only really blossomed during the corona period,” Bobbi reveals in conversation with Glamial.
After a good dose of inspiration via Pinterest, Bobbi decided to get started herself with an orange box ‘and the cheapest seeds for tomato and cucumber’ that she could find at Action. This turned out to be a golden opportunity: “After less than four or five days, a green tuft already emerged. I thought I was going into cardiac arrest, I was so proud and happy. All I had was a plant spray and soil. Other than that, I had no idea what I was doing, other than giving love. And something still came up!”
‘Here we go again’
Ultimately, this first attempt yielded fifteen tomato plants and fifteen cucumber plants. Not bad, right? Bobbi reveals that her husband Mark Laurenz was initially not very keen on her new hobby: “Mark is always chill, but he has a stroke when I take up a new hobby. Let’s go again, he thinks. But he soon loved this, because he saw how everything grew.” The fact that, as a chef, he could then work with ingredients from his own garden was of course a bonus.
“In the beginning, everyone laughed at my new hobby: what are you doing again?”, Bobbi looks back. “But it soon became: say, do you have a head of fresh lettuce for me?” Ha!
Faux pas
Of course, not everything goes smoothly when you discover a new hobby. For example, Mark decided to prepare the garden for winter after the harvest started to dry up in the autumn. “He thought everything was dead, so he threw all the plants in the green bin,” says Bobbi. “When I discovered that, I had murderous tendencies for a moment. What do you mean, everything is dead?”
Bobbi of course knew better, and decided to attempt a rescue. “First I told Mark to leave, then I called my mother, crying. I had tried so hard. Because of everything I had read and learned about plants, I knew exactly what was winter-hardy and what was not. I fished all the winter-hardy plants out of the green bin and put them back in the containers with new soil.”
Final score: about 85 percent of the plants ultimately survived. And Mark? “He then said: ‘It’s better if I don’t touch it anymore.’ Now he asks permission to get rid of something every time he is working in the garden, haha.”
Want to get green fingers like Bobbi? In her new book How to Start a Vegetable Garden she explains in an accessible way how to start and care for your own vegetable garden.
This article is part of an interview with Bobbi Eden, Jelka van Houten and Anne-Mar Zwart about their greatest passions and special hobbies outside the spotlight. You can read the full article in the new Glamial. Now in stores!
Interview: Fleur Baxmeier | Photos: Feriet Tunc
