A Tasteful Place at the Dallas Arboretum

The Dallas Arboretum recently opened a new 3.5 acre edible garden called Tasteful Place.  It was inspired by the sustainable, local food movement.  The arboretum partnered with P. Allen Smith to designing both the garden and it's programming.

It has a great location at the Arboretum with great views of White Rock Lake and Dallas's city skyline.  They did a great job of tying it into the Autumn at the Arboretum with fall colored flowers and some large Big Mac pumpkins place strategically around.

They have daily classes, lectures, demonstrations and tastings in the garden and its indoor kitchen.  In fact, P. Allen Smith was going to be doing a demonstration later that day.  They had a few food items that we could sample that were all tasty (a soup, a green salsa and a ranch dip).  They have a really robust public program program for this garden.  It will be interesting to see long term if they continue at this pace.

All of the beds were planted with full grown plants.  Lots of egg plants, okra, peppers, cool season greens and edible flowers.  There were no beds that had seedlings or plants that weren't of fruiting size.

The garden was really beautiful and meticulously maintained.  While that was really nice,  I also think it seemed really artificial.  Everything was full grown and ready to harvest.  There was no sign of any succession planting or even crops that would be ready soon.  It was an interesting juxtaposition that a garden that was so focused on teaching people about food would forget to teach them about growing their food.  I really think they missed an opportunity.  I know there is a lot of pressure to make sure everything is show ready in a public garden, but that isn't how vegetable gardening works.

I can't wait to see how this garden matures in future years and hope that they stray from the current look of perfection.  It did make me miss having a vegetable garden and look at my current yard/garden plans to see where I might be able to squeeze something in.