Andrew Hewson plucks a seedpod off a nasturtium and pops it in his mouth.
“They’ve got a bit of a bite to them. They’re really peppery,” he said.
The orange-blossomed flowers are among 130 edible plants sown in the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology garden, the first of its kind associated with a culinary program in Canada.
A culinary instructor at the school in Calgary, Hewson has been growing vegetables all his life and three years ago wanted to teach future chefs about how such food grows.
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“My big thing when I got into cooking was to have the freshest ingredients and I thought this was a no brainer,” he said.
He took the concept to the school’s administration and received an $85,000 budget.
The school offers an apprenticeship and professional culinary program with as many as 400 students on campus during the academic year.
A patch of land around the education towers was worked up and last spring the first garden was planted with everything from arugula to zucchini. This year’s cold weather, incessant rains and one pounding hailstorm challenged the garden but it survived.
Some items are for demonstration purposes but others produced enough for the students to use in their classes and for a gala dinner in September.
A major Calgary wine store provided $100,000 to create a wine garden that includes herbs, grape vines, apple trees, strawberries, raspberries, currants and other fruit bearing shrubs and trees.
Part of the bed will grow plants that pair with white wines while the other side is linked to red wines.
The institute also formed a partnership with Olds College where a horticulture student was hired to help maintain the plot for the summer.
“We are 90 minutes apart and we teach students to cook the food and they teach students to grow it and yet we never got together,” Hewson said of the two schools.
“Chefs are promoting buying from the local farmer but there are still a lot of things we can learn from each other.”
A tall fence surrounds the garden where fruit trees and herbs encircle the beds, which also include grains.
A future plan is to add a wood oven to teach artisan baking to culinary students or use in the continuing education programs.
Hewson also hopes to plant more fruit trees around the campus.
“Our goal is to make SAIT a more edible campus because there is the space and there is always landscap-
ing being done and trees going in,” he said.
Next year, a greenhouse will be built to start seedlings early in the season and house more delicate plants.
Hewson cited a renewed interest in gardening in urban yards.
“We take it for granted for those of us who have been in the business for a while and we know what stuff is and we forget a lot of the students are coming from urban centres and they haven’t seen gardens or how to recognize certain things,” he said.
Hewson wants more field trips to farms so students can see larger scale production and meet producers who could supply them with fresh food.
Ultimately, he wants more land to grow plants or partner with a local farmer who would be willing to set aside some space for them to grow more plants to provide food for the program and campus dining rooms.
Hewson is also hoping to inspire more gardens on campus to educate younger students on how food is produced.
“There are two generations that have lost touch with food preparation and just basic stuff,” he said.
