Edible Dallas & Fort Worth Spring 2022

DEEP IN THE HEART

like Piper’s first front-yard raised beds, serve to inspire—planting a seed of opportunity. Chefs love the gardens for their potential to supply some of the freshest ingredients possible, foster creativity, aid in discovering different flavor profiles by season, and utilize all edible parts of a plant. “Everyone should understand, even just a little bit, what happens from when a seed goes into the ground to what ends up on a plate,” Piper says. The Culinary Cocktail Bar tenders and bar managers might be the most experimental and ef- ficient stewards of their on-site gardens, picking both herbs and edible flowers for their unusual colors and the intense flavor profiles they add to cocktail garnishes and infusions. While edible flowers are certainly both beautiful and functional, they are not without their own set of challenges. Urban Dirt takes the extra step to ensure that the plants enhance taste but are also the highest qual- ity for the consumer. “It’s hard to find organic flowers, [but it’s] important because they are for a culinary use.We have to babysit those plants, cutting all the flowers off, growing them out and [always eliminating] any synthetic chemicals,” Piper says. Sweet and spicey dianthus, citrusy Tiny Gem marigolds, and peppery nasturtiums are just a few of the many edible flowers you can find elevat- ing both food and drink at Urban Dirt-supported gardens. “We let everything bolt: the arugula, the basil, cilantro. We usually can’t grow enough for daily use on a full menu, production-wise, so we grow them for the flowers,” Piper explains. Building Community Real estate developers and property managers love the gardens, too. “Something that we don’t really always talk about is these gardens are PR pieces. Some of these gardens are here because they make property managers appear forward-thinking and interesting,” Piper says. And she’s perfectly fine with the opportunity to inspire other would-be gardeners. “Tours always include a walk past the gardens, which is beneficial for the property owners, their prospective tenants, as well as the restau- rant,” she says.

Chef Junior Borges, Executive Chef at the Meridian Restaurant in Dallas

Growing Into the Restaurant Scene You can find Urban Dirt-sprouted food gardens (some exceeding 20 raised beds!) at the restaurants Rye and Patina Green inMcKin- ney, LC Kitchen in Plano, and Homewood and Meridian in Dal- las, as well as at theThompson and Virgin hotels. “Our company’s mission is to build culinary gardens to connect chefs with gardening,” Piper says. She and her team of gardening gurus build four-season-harvest gardens that connect communities with hyper-locally grown ingre- dients. These gardens help local chefs and their restaurants tell a story with the vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers they produce. While typically not big enough to supply all of a restaurant’s need for produce, the gardens’ innate ability to draw people in, much

Piper’s Garden

32 | EDIBLE DALLAS & FORT WORTH SPRING 2022