Colorado State University Prepares to Open New Herb Garden
Colorado State University’s flower trial garden. This year, visitors will have a new garden to enjoy. | Colorado State University
Barney Feinblum’s Connection to Colorado
Barney Feinblum helped shape the natural and organic food movement long before it entered the mainstream. Trained as an industrial engineer at Cornell University, he later earned an MBA in finance after moving to Colorado. In 1976, he joined Celestial Seasonings just as the company began packaging herbal tea in bags rather than loose herbs. Over the next 17 years, he rose from managing the factory floor to serving as CEO, helping guide a small, values-driven company into a household name.
What set Celestial Seasonings apart, Feinblum says, was not only its products but the principles behind them.
“It taught that you don’t have to compromise your values to be successful,” Feinblum says. “You have to make sales and make a profit, but you can do it with values.”
Those values of truth, beauty, and goodness — all shaped Feinblum’s career well beyond Celestial Seasonings. After leaving the company, he became CEO of Horizon Organic Dairy, where he helped introduce the first widely available organic milk in the U.S.
“We changed the dairy industry,” says Feinblum. “People were willing to invest in their values.”
That same belief — that business, science, and values could reinforce one another — would later shape his connection to Colorado State University (CSU).
The Julie and Barney Feinblum Herb Garden
Despite decades spent working in Colorado’s natural products industry, Feinblum had never set foot on CSU’s campus until recently. That changed after a visit to CSU Spur in Denver, where he saw firsthand how CSU was applying scientific rigor and innovation to agriculture and food systems. During that visit, while speaking with individuals in the College of Agricultural Sciences, one question stayed with him:
“Where’s your herb garden?” Feinblum recalled asking. “You’re a school that is arguably the epitome of a land grant institution enveloped in the environment and agriculture, so where is your herb garden? How can you not have one?”
As Colorado’s land-grant institution and home to agriculture, veterinary medicine, and food science, CSU seemed like the natural place for an herb garden that could connect education, business, and history. Feinblum was especially struck by the absence, given Colorado’s outsized role in shaping the natural foods movement.
“CSU should be proud of the role that Colorado companies played in changing how America eats,” Feinblum says. “With just a few simple plants, you can have an impact.”
That realization led to the creation of the Julie and Barney Feinblum Herb Garden, named to honor Feinblum and his wife, Julie, both of whom hold a lifelong passion for plants and herbs, which helped inspire the gift. Endowed in perpetuity, the garden will feature medicinal, culinary, and tea herbs, serving as both a living classroom and a tangible connection between students, research, and industry. Students will be able to see, touch, and study herbs that once launched entire industries — from tea to medicine to food systems.
“You don’t change the world when you’re my age,” says Feinblum. “You do it when you’re a young person just out of college, when you have energy and enthusiasm and want to make the world a better place. That’s why this herb garden will be a living classroom for students.”
For Feinblum, the garden represents more than plants. It reflects legacy, gratitude, and a desire to give back.
“Colorado changed my life,” Feinblum says. “We built a good life here, and we want to give back to the state of Colorado.”
Looking ahead, Feinblum hopes the garden will evolve into one of the nation’s leading herb collections, supported not only by his family but also by the broader natural products community.
For additional information on the Julie and Barney Feinblum Herb Garden, please read the original article on the CSU website and additional coverage from Rocky Mountain PBS.
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