Edible Garden – Chicago IL by Patty

Wednesday, August 29. After our morning at the Green City Market, we visited a project run by the market and the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Edible Garden. Located right inside the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Edible Garden is a project that started several years ago to teach kids in Chicago where food comes from. The organic garden is available for kids to get a hands-on gardening experience when the Green City Market is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

We talked with Jeanne Pinsof of the Edible Garden, about the growth in interest in gardening in general and the impact that coming to the garden has on kids from all walks of life. Some kids make their parents bring them back to the garden every week to check on something they planted in the spring. And with school groups coming throughout the year, the Edible Garden exposes hundreds of kids to the ideas that food comes from somewhere besides the supermarket and that vegetables can taste really good. As Jeannie put it, whether they are rich or poor, “the joy is equivalent” when a kid tastes the carrot they just pulled out of the ground for the first time.

We also had a fascinating conversation about something we’ve been seeing on this trip, that we are in a period of real change in the food supply and in people’s interest in buying more sustainable. Once again, Jeannie captured it by explaining that she is seeing the same thing in Chicago, in part because “food makes sense to everybody.”

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