Eatable, edible and even Botanical

The Good Food Garden at The New York Botanical Gardens teaches families how to grow their own vegetables, even in small spaces. Photo by Sarah Halliday

By Sarah Halliday

This summer the New York Botanical Garden spotlights fruits and vegetables in its brand-new exhibit, Edible Garden. And in the words of Willy Wonka, “almost everything you see is eatable, edible, I mean, you can eat almost everything!”

The 250-acre wonderland is filled with yummy surprises from around the world that anyone with a taste for cooking or a passion for gardening will enjoy. Along with profiling some of the most eccentric plants, the garden’s goal is to educate patrons in leading healthy and well-fed lives.

“We want to show people that even if they don’t have a lot of space, all it takes is a windowsill,” said Nicholas Yeshi, associate director of public relations and electronic media at the Garden.

As visitors walk through the park, they will find lavish exhibits, like Martha Stewart’s Herb Garden, where the famous homemaker- guru highlights culinary herbs. They will also stumble across small potted gardens, each with several different plants, some mixing pineapples with tomatoes, others peppers and sunflowers. Chalkboards surround raised-bed gardens in the Beginner’s Garden and other areas of the park, giving tips on how to start and maintain simple patches of earth at home. There is also a site-specific cell phone tour narrated by Mario Batali.

If you just want to look, there’s plenty to see.

In the Haupt Conservatory, next to the stunning heights of exotic palm trees, you can find everything from “pineapples to pomegranates” as part of the Tropical Fruits, Roots, and Shoots exhibit. Inside the glasshouse, a curious browser can find coffee and chocolate trees, rice, corn, coconuts, avocados, and an incredible variety of peppers.

Close by, the Home Gardening Center is home to the Seed Savers Vegetable Garden. It houses a variety of beautifully delicious heirloom vegetables, herbs and flowers. These plants are not bred in mass quantities, and may look strange to those raised on the products of supermarket shelves. Heirloom varieties are often much larger than those found in most stores, and might not be as pleasing to the eye, but are often superior in the nutrition they offer.

On the other side of the Garden, families and children can plant, tend and harvest their very own fruits and veggies. Vegetables and Kids displays gardens aimed at creatively educating kids about what is in their food. Gardens are split into categories like “pizza pie,” which grows tomatoes and basil, and “breakfast bowl” that has wheat, corn, oats, and rice — all the ingredients found in cereal.

Guests are invited to come back after hours to learn to cook some of the items found in the exhibit. On Thursdays, Edible Evenings: A Celebration of Wine, Beer, and Food presents a number of celebrity and local chefs cooking up some fantastic dishes as well as giving guests the inside scoop on beer and winemaking. Featured chefs have included Anne Burrell, host of the Food Network series Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and Sunny Anderson, host of Food Network’s Cooking for Real.

This month, Edible Evenings will include Mandy Aftel, owner of Aftelier Perfumes on Aug. 6, Maricel Presilla, chef, cookbook author and Latin-American food historian on Aug. 13, and Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA on Aug. 20.

The Edible Garden closes with a two-day festival, including cooking demonstrations by renowned chefs and TV personalities Lidia Bastianich and Emeril Lagasse, on September 12 and 13 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This is part of the August 6, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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