Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
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In a country dominated by ornamental landscapes that are beautiful but (almost) useless, it's refreshing to see an edible landscape demonstration on the scale of the Heartland Harvest Garden - it's 12 acres of incredible edibles, with hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables, creating a "window shop of possibilities".
The Heartland Harvest Garden is located at the Powell Gardens just outside of Kansas City in Kingsville, Mo., and the huge number of varieties grown there are arranged into themes, like the Kitchen Garden, Apple Celebration Court, the Menu Garden, and Pear Promenade. Kids can wander around the brambly Tutti-Frutti berry maze, while adults may enjoy the local-crop focused Old Missouri and Kansas Star gardens, showcasing some of the state's traditional and currently grown crops.
Another section is called the Authors' Garden, where the current philosophies of top garden writers will be teatured in a rotating exhibit. The Author's Garden was designed by Rosalind Creasy, the author of "The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping."
The Harvest Garden has over 600 varieties of vegetables, 45 varieties of peaches and nectarines, 80 types of apples, 50 kinds of grapes, and a cornucopia of other fruits and nuts, like apricots, pears, plums, blueberries, goji berries, pecans and peanuts. One of the purposes of the garden is to demonstrate just about everything the local climate can reasonably support, and to show locals and visitors about the direct connection from seed to table.
Running the Heartland Harvest Garden is Matt Bunch, who was recently featured on the cover of American Gardener, the magazine of the American Horticultural Society. Bunch says "It's an edible landscape, and so that means pretty much every plant has some sort of purpose in the food chain, at least in our food chain." According to their website, it's the nation's largest edible landscape planting.
A restaurant on the grounds called Fresh: A Garden Cafe uses produce from the gardens, serving the varieties that are ready for harvest, and tasting stations in the garden lets visitors really connect to eating locally and seasonally.
For most of us, we'd be hard pressed to name even a fraction of the varieties of fruits and vegetables grown in the gardens (quick, name all of the varieties of apples you know). For an edible educational experience, I think the Heartland Harvest Garden is going to be tough to beat, and if you're going to be in the area, stop by and say thanks for showing the rest of us what's possible.
For an in depth look at Matt Bunch, see Heartland's harvest: KU graduate a national figure in sustainable gardening movement, at Lawrence.com)
More about Edible Landscapes and Gardening:
2009: The Year of the Edible Garden
11 High-Concept Ideas for Low-Tech Green Living
5 Alternatives to a Backyard Garden
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