Michelle hopes successors will keep her kitchen garden in WH

 US First Lady Michelle Obama hopes that her kitchen garden project which she calls "my baby" started inside the White House stays even after the first family leaves the official residence next January.

52-year-old Michelle presided over the eighth and final planting yesterday and said the garden has exceeded expectations, sparking a national conversation about what people eat and stoking renewed interest in community gardening.

"This is my baby. And hopefully, this will not be the last planting. Hopefully, there will be other administrations who come in and they take up this project and continue to make this a part of the White House tradition," the 52-year-old told a group of kids who helped her last spring planting at her kitchen garden.

"Do you guys have any idea why it's so special for me in particular?  Why?" she asked the select group of students from Wisconsin, Louisiana and Colorado.
"Well, this will be the last White House Kitchen Garden planting for me in this administration," she explained.

"It was eight years ago that we cooked up this really interesting idea that maybe we could dig up some dirt on the South Lawn, let them do that -- maybe somebody would let us do that, and we would plant a wonderful garden that would be a space for us to talk about the food we eat" she said.

Michelle said this has been really a fun tradition for her at the White House.

"Because I think we've really been able to change the conversation about what you guys eat. Because our thought was that if you know where your food comes from, you might be a little more interested in eating your vegetables if you know what they look like," she observed.

The garden has become so much more than that, she said, adding it is a place where her staff comes to volunteer.

"People from around the White House come, they help out. We've produced thousands of pounds of food every year that we give to homeless shelters in the area. We've gotten organisations involved," she said.

"And we've seen an increase in the number of folks that are planting community gardens in their neighbourhoods. They're even doing some community gardening in space," she said.

The First Lady said she would soon be doing some surprise visits to community gardens around the nation.

"On Thursday, we're setting out to do some surprise visits in a couple of states in our country. We did a few surprise visits here just a few weeks ago, surprised a couple of schools that have some phenomenal school gardens, as well as some community farmers," she said.

54-year-old Barack Obama will demit office on January 20, 2017 after completing two successive terms as President of the US.