Filed under: Gardening, Garden Tours, How-To, News & Trends
A vacant lot is transformed into an edible garden in the niftiest of ways.You might not recognize the name Brown-Forman, but you're probably familiar with their brands like Jack Daniel's, Southern Comfort or Fetzer wines. Well, employees here are towing a new company line: gardening cultivates happiness in the workplace.
Brown-Forman head chef Mark Williams has always had a passion for gardening, and a few years ago, when he found out a nearby building on their Louisville, Kentucky campus was going to be demolished, he jumped at the chance to claim the vacant lot to plant a company garden. Still, he had to figure out how to grow stuff on the abandoned lot. Answer: The company agreed to let chef Mark use some of their old whiskey and bourbon barrels and give them new life as planters.
The Brown-Forman official barrel container garden. Photo: Brown-Forman
Chef Mark is very involved in Slow Food USA, an organization that promotes eating food grown in your community, and he's a firm believer in organic gardening. The Brown-Foreman parking lot garden is 100% organic, and home to everything from tomatoes to rare and endangered varieties of heirloom veggies. The garden, now four years old, has grown to 242 barrels and provides most of the produce for the company's cafeteria, which caters to Brown-Forman's 4,000 employees. The garden saves the company about $100 per day.
Chef Mark plants seeds for a new crop. Photo: Brown-Forman
Garden club member Anne Braun, manager of office facility design at Brown-Forman, says that she can't grow a garden at home due to an abundance of shade trees: "I was thrilled to be able to join the gardening club and have the opportunity to work in an organic garden. With the Garden Club, I can put in just one hour per week and I get my own barrel to plant with my choice of heirloom vegetables."
"It's really great for a chef to be able to come out of the kitchen and into a garden where they can commune with nature, and grow some of the foods they're cooking with," Mark says. "The flavors from what we're growing are so much better than what we were getting from the produce company. In our foods, we're using a lot more herbs, and the trend has been lighter, healthier and more local food."
The vegetables are growing in a barrel, thanks to care from employees. Photo: Brown-Forman
If you walked along the rows of barrels, you'd see a variety of plants. There are herbs -- basil, thyme, parsley, sage and Vietnamese coriander. Plus, veggies: Their tomatoes have cross-pollinated and thus they've grown their very own variety of tomato, which they have deemed the "Old No. 7 Tomato," after Jack Daniel's Old No. 7.
Additionally, they've been growing unusual mint varieties, such as apple mint, pineapple mint and Kentucky colonel mint in Witner Reserve Barrels. They use these for their $1000 mint juleps sold at the Kentucky Derby for charity.
The best part about chef Mark's garden is that it can be replicated anywhere. All you need is a container! He thinks it's particularly easy to grow in, say, a barrel since it cuts down on weeds. Listen up, city dwellers: If you have limited space, you might try growing in a few containers.
Want to make your very own barrel garden? Here are a few easy steps to making a barrel planter for your own container garden, courtesy of Brown-Foreman.
1. Drill two drainage holes in the barrel, one in the bottom and one on the side, approximately two inches from the bottom.
2. Cover the holes with small pieces of window screen or weed blocking fabric, to keep soil from washing out of barrels and blocking drainage holes.
3. Fill barrels with untreated wood mulch.
4. Top barrels with a 50/50 mixture of organic topsoil and organic compost, about 40 lbs.
5. Add organic fertilizer and worms.
6. Install drip irrigation or develop watering plan to keep soil moist.
7. Plant with organic vegetables, fruit, flower seeds or plants.
Want another unique gardening idea? Check out our fab or fad: upside-down gardens.