Actor Jake Gyllenhaal is urging kids to adopt healthy eating habits by teaming up with American schools to foster the importance of gardening.

The Brokeback Mountain star has partnered with famed chef Alice Waters to promote the Edible Schoolyard Project, a program aimed at teaching children to grow and cook their own food, in order to prevent childhood obesity and other diseases like diabetes.

Gyllenhaal actively set an example and rolled up his sleeves to work with young kids at the Boys & Girls Club in San Francisco, California to prove that tending a garden can be fun and educational.

During an appearance on the Today Show on Tuesday, he said, "I grew up around gardens, growing my own food. My family did that a lot, that was a real source of community growing up. More than anything, I got to know my mother and father and my sister, and they got to know me, at the dinner table...

"The essence of the idea of these gardens is that the kids can come and experience what it's like to grow something and see something grow. And then, once they do see it grow, they have a different relationship with what they eat."