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FeedSeed to Plate
A Heartland Harvest Garden Opens at Kingsville
Courtesy Powell Gardens
The garden entrance opens to a courtyard where visitors can find the day's tasting station location, what the special of the day is at Fresh: A Garden Cafe, and the special activities schedule.
The only garden of its kind in the United States and the largest expansion Powell Gardens at Kingsville has undertaken, the Heartland Harvest Garden opens on June 14. This twelve-acre installation celebrates Midwest agriculture and also features two thousand plant varieties, including orchards, vegetables, and other food crops from around the world. Year-round education, food-related research, and special events are a few ways the garden will entice and engage visitors.
Powell Gardens already incorporates perennial, waterfall, rock, island, and fountain gardens within 915 acres of rural countryside. There are also a spacious, light-filled visitor education center, a cafe, and a meditation chapel designed by Fay Jones, an architect and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright.
But the Heartland Harvest Garden will be a place where visitors can follow food “from seed to plate.” Heirloom peaches native to China—Beijing is like Tulsa in climate—will grow in the entry garden. The Spanish brought them to Mexico, and they later arrived in the United States. There’s also a Cherokee Indian peach growing here, plus ornamental edible plants, such as rosemary, olives, pineapple guavas, coconut palm, and Sea Buckthorns, of which each berry has the vitamin C of an entire orange.
“Anything you can grow here, we will,” says Alan Branhagen, director of horticulture.
The new Heartland Harvest Garden will include a forty-foot observation silo, produce tasting stations, and a barn with a gift shop and a cafe. Visitors will be able to purchase additional produce, in season—“a peck of Powell”—at the gift shop, and any food excess will be donated to food pantries. There will also be chefs’ demonstrations and cooking classes at the Kansas City Power & Light All Electric Cooktop.
While standing near the top of the silo, visitors will enjoy expansive views. Individual gardening authors will re-create the Authors’ Garden every few years and make educational presentations during their tenure. Rosalind Creasy, who created the term “edible landscape” and wrote The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, and Barbara Damrosch, author of The Garden Primer and a Washington Post columnist, are the first designing authors.
Beyond this garden, dozens of patio, dwarf, and standard peach trees bloom profusely within a brick spiral paved area called the Peach Plaza, and fifty-four varieties of apples grow in the Apple Celebration Court. Deep green vines in the vineyard thicken with grapes grown throughout Missouri, plus several other varieties such as Chardonnay grapes. Edible hybrid tea roses grow nearby, as a companion plant. A large arbor, a fountain, and handcrafted ornamental gates decorate the vineyard.
But this is only the beginning. Inspired by France’s famous Villandry gardens, the Quilt Gardens feature four three-quarter-acre quadrants whose edible crops, vegetables, and fruits will incorporate textures, shapes, and colors that create ever-changing visual designs—each one created to resemble a classic quilt pattern. The Quilt Gardens will display the world’s food plants, and the landscape will change seasonally.
Fun Foods Farm, a youth education garden with a bubbling stream, operational windmill, cistern, rain barrel, and the Tutti Frutti Maze, is full of edible fruits. Students through the eighth grade enjoy hands-on learning in a greenhouse and interactive gardens. Powell Gardens offers many additional programs related to education curriculum requirements for science, history, math, art, and healthy lifestyles.
“Gardens can help urban children see where their food comes from,” says Karen Elliott, nutrition and health education specialist, with University of Missouri Extension in Jackson County. “They can also encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables when they can taste them fresh from the garden.”
The Heartland Harvest Garden will also include:
- The Seed to Plate Greenhouse. The plants of some of America’s favorite breakfast foods will be here, from coffee, tea, and chocolate to bananas and oranges. On the other side of the greenhouse, visitors will see how seeds germinate and grow into plants. A cross-section of the three hundred-some vegetable varieties produced for the garden will be showcased here.
- A Kitchen Garden with an extensive collection of culinary herbs planted in designs reminiscent of a Celtic knot garden, a Japanese crest garden, and quilt blocks.
- An adjacent Butterfly Garden, which serves as an “insectary” to encourage populations of beneficial insects that help pollinate and control the number of “bad bugs” in the garden.
Visit www.powellgardens.org for more information.
