The Food Garden is a formal space where visitors are encouraged to explore our connection to food through display and demonstration. Partially enclosing the garden is a sound-abatement wall, which acts to some degree as a heat sink, benefiting the establishment and hastening the ripening of some crops. Outside the wall are espalier trained apple and pear trees. These are sited where there is optimal air circulation, so that moisture-mediated diseases can be kept to a minimum. Inside the wall are laid out a pattern of raised beds that display a wide variety of vegetables and culinary herbs. Raised beds allow the soil to heat up earlier in the spring, provide needed drainage and are easier to work than ground-level beds.
Plantings in the Food Garden are worked in a sustainable manner by the Garden’s professional gardening staff without the use of synthetic pesticides, using organic gardening techniques and a variety of cultural tools, such as companion planting, mulching and crop rotation to maximize performance. Visitors are kindly asked to not remove any produce from the garden, as all of the Food Garden’s produce is directed to the Healthy Harvest Program. This initiative engages staff and volunteer students and Friends of the Garden (FOGs) to help address food insecurity on campus.
Seasonal Highlights
Spring is an exciting time in the garden when newly germinated seedlings and the expanding flower buds of trees and shrubs hold the promise of lush growth and bountiful yields. The time of most obvious productivity in the Food Garden is in summer with the majority of vegetables and small fruits ripening and harvested during the time of warmest weather. Many vegetable crops continue to produce late in the growing season and fruits like apples, pears, and melons are usually only ripening when autumn rains begin. Some crops are protected by cloches, frames or tunnels at both ends of the growing season, both to conserve heat for establishment or ripening, and for protection against moisture-borne fungus diseases. When the garden remains frost free into the winter months, which sometimes happens during El Niño cycles, leafy salad crops and cold-hardy brassicas continue to be productive well into the new year.
Significant Collections
Only about half of the plants in the Food Garden are permanently planted. This includes tree fruits, berries, perennial vegetables (e.g., asparagus and rhubarb), and culinary herbs. Some vegetables are sown directly in the garden while others are grown from seed in the Botanical Garden Nursery and transplanted to the Food Garden once the soil warms sufficiently.
Of all of the Garden’s components, the Food Garden probably elicits the greatest response from the widest variety of people. It’s easy to talk with people in the garden and even children who may have only been exposed to store-bought food immediately engage with real food plants growing in the ground. Harvesting food represents one of our earliest social activities as human beings and some people think we are hard-wired for it.
History
Inaugurated in March 1983 by UBC Botanical Garden Director Roy L. Taylor, the Food Garden demonstrates the culture of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables for the home garden. The garden was designed by Justice & Webb Landscape Architects, and the Garden Club of Vancouver provided special funding to support the acquisition and planting of the permanent collection.
Feature: Espalier
Espalier has come to mean a compact, ornamental style of training fruit trees for increased productivity, but its original meaning refers to the framework upon which such trees were trained (Ital. spalliera: a lattice-work or row of stakes). Espaliered trees are normally grafted on “dwarfing” rootstocks and trained as young plants along wires or stakes. Designs include three-dimensional vase, pyramid and goblet shapes and the more common two-dimensional cordons, fans, horizontals and step-overs.
