Garden Gallery
The Edible Gardens
The Organic Gardener’s flagship project—open to the public and welcoming
more than 25,000 visitors annually—is The Edible Gardens, planted and maintained by Green City Market in the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Farm-in-the-Zoo presented by John Deere. The mission of the Edible Gardens—which also receive tremendous support from volunteers participating in the University of Illinois Extension’s Master Gardener program—is to give Chicago’s children a hands-on education in where their food comes from, and ensure that local youth have the knowledge, experience and inspiration to create a sustainable food system.
TOG’s involvement in The Edible Gardens began in 2005, when Green City Market founder Abby Mandel selected Jeanne Pinsof Nolan to assume responsibility for the Zoo’s existing children’s garden. Jeanne created and implemented an ambitious and popular hands-on program, engaging children and families in all aspects of organic vegetable production, from planting and weeding to harvesting and tasting. In spring 2007, Jeanne and the TOG team began cultivating an additional plot, measuring 4,300 square feet; this expansion greatly increased the program’s capacity to accommodate school groups, families, teachers, and school administrators. During the 2008 season, over 2,000 students from over 20 schools made The Edible Gardens a field-trip destination.
The larger garden also functions as a demonstration site for a variety of advances in gardening technology: It features Earth Boxes (which were developed by the UN to facilitate food-growing under even the most inhospitable conditions); three different composting systems; plus wheelchair-accessible paths and state-of-the-art raised beds, which offer handicapped children and adults the opportunity to enjoy the garden and participate in its activities. Also, season extension techniques allow the gardens to involve children in hands-on learning throughout the spring and fall—as early as mid-March and as late as mid-November, visitors are likely to find something to plant and/or harvest.
The 2010 season promises to be the biggest and best yet for The Edible Gardens. Probable improvements include: extending the gardens’ open hours, to accommodate more field trips; using the Farm-in-the-Zoo’s kitchen to stage classes covering vegetable-cooking and nutritious eating; creating a curriculum of garden-related activities that children can carry out before and after garden visits; offering hands-on classes for adults, on topics such as city composting, container gardening, and heirloom vegetable gardening; and giving families the chance to contribute their food waste to the gardens’ composters.
In the long term, The Edible Gardens will function as a prototype for Midwestern versions of Alice Waters’s Berkeley-based Edible Schoolyard. In October 2007, after visiting The Edible Gardens and speaking with Jeanne, Alice secured a pledge from Mayor Daley to implement pilot Edible Schoolyards in six Chicago public schools. The success of this program—which has the potential not only to teach school children how to grow food, but also to improve the quality of school lunches, and make the natural world an essential teaching tool across the curriculum—depends in large part on the availability of a model garden and laboratory in which teachers and principals can learn techniques and practices specially suited to Chicago’s growing season. The Edible Gardens are the perfect springboard for introducing the Midwest to what Waters calls “edible education.”
