Members-only

page pg_standard.xsl May_2011_Green

Grown at Longwood: A look inside the Professional Gardener Students' Vegetable Garden

Take a bite into something fresh from our own Gardens this summer at the Terrace Restaurant.

“It doesn’t get more local than this—Starting the first week of June you’ll find our chefs using ingredients grown at Longwood Gardens in many menu items,” says General Manager of the Terrace Restaurant Tijs Wolters.

Specifically, guests will enjoy the fruits of the Professional Gardener (PG) students' labor as they taste sauces, side dishes, salads, and specials on the menu in 1906. The items grown directly at Longwood Gardens will be marked with a sign that says, I’m grown at Longwood.

This is the second consecutive year that the Professional Gardener students are selling their produce to the Terrace Restaurant—and it’s a successful program Wolters doesn’t anticipate stopping anytime soon.

“The chefs love using local, fresh produce—especially when it’s grown right here at Longwood because it helps us achieve a low carbon footprint. This also exemplifies our continued commitment to sustainability like our Green Restaurant Certification. We’re also excited about supporting the students,” says Wolters.

Read all about the progress of the student vegetable garden online!
PG students Emily Mox and Kaitlyn Sterner are the two managers of the student vegetable garden. “The success of the garden, and the food guests enjoy this summer really depends on us. Our job is to manage our fellow classmates to ensure that sowing, transplanting, harvesting, and maintenance is performed on our vegetable garden,” says Sterner.

This summer be sure to bookmark Longwood Gardens’ blog, Behind the Plants, as Mox and Sterner will be taking turns posting updates, stories, and photos about the student garden on the web.

Click here to read Mox’s first post about the preparation phase of the vegetable garden.

“I’ve loved growing and eating veggies since I was about two years old, and as my excitement and passion for horticulture has increased so has my interest in veggie production,” says Mox. “This project with the Terrace Restaurant is a perfect learning opportunity to take my experience into a real life situation of growing fresh produce for a restaurant.”

Among others, some of the veggies the students plan to sell to the Terrace Restaurant include: Peas, carrots, potatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, kohlrabi, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, summer squash, sweet potatoes, tomatillos, winter squash, and tomatoes.

Sterner who is a junior PG student says, “I don’t know if even in the real world I’ll get to do a project that is as unique as this. Normally when you grow vegetables for sale you have no idea where they will end up. Here, we can walk to the Café, order off the menu, and see our hard work come out from the kitchen,” says Sterner.

The students will begin to harvest their early season crops in June, and the first crops that are expected to hit the kitchen at the Terrace Restaurant are peas and lettuce. The money that the PG students earn from vegetable sales at the Terrace Restaurant will go towards the Class of 2012’s trip abroad.