Vogue is wondering whether Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden (which had its first harvest this week) may have been an inspiration to the Queen — especially as the two women have grown close with multiple visits over the past few months. Either way — how cool is it to have so many families doing the same thing? I can’t remember a year when “home gardening” was such a buzz word.

But back to Michelle Obama’s garden — Matt Drudge, editor of the blog Drudge Report, earlier this week accused the First Lady of “faking” her vegetable garden — saying there’s no way she could have harvested plants that fast. Seriously? We’re now going after the White House garden?

Thankfully, one conservative stepped in to set Drudge straight saying that a little googling on the growth rate of Michelle’s plants would have saved him from “making a complete ass out of himself.”

Happy growing!

After picking up the world’s largest wind turbine back in May, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is now introducing some local green changes to her Scottish residence. First order of business? Having her bodyguards do their patrolling of the grounds on bikes rather than in Range Rovers.

Apparently, the gas-guzzlers have seen extensive use on the property — and not just because the Scottish weather can chill your bones. Queen Elizabeth’s estate at Balmoral is also more than 50,000 acres large. That’s a pretty massive expanse to cover. Nevertheless, the guards are hitting it with two wheels to save fuel and the planet.

“Wherever possible the grounds are being patrolled by officers on black mountain bikes,” said one source. “They are delighted – they’re slashing the fuel bill and getting a good workout as well.”

Now, about those bear-fur hats for the royal guard….

via monstersandcritics

Queen Elizabeth has decided to invest some serious cash in the world’s largest wind turbine — a 7.5 megawatt monster. I’ve seen some 1.5mw behemoths that were gigantic, so this thing must be massive.

Now, of course, we don’t imagine the Queen herself was pouring over wind turbine options — this move comes on behalf of her property company the Crown Estate. From the article,

“The Estate, which owns most of the seabed off Britain’s shores, regularly leases out its land to wind farm projects but has never invested in the turbines. With a capacity of 7.5 megawatts, the Crown has gone for the biggest yet. ‘This is not something we’ve ever done before and I think it will raise quite a few eyebrows,’ Ben Barton, the company’s offshore manager for wind farms said.”

The turbine is expected to be fully operational by 2010 — with all the power generated sold to the national grid and the Queen’s iPod. Seriously. We hear she loves David Cook but would “love to have David Archuleta over for dinner.” 

Reuters via Green Daily