Come explore the new Heartland Harvest Garden, a delicious place designed to satisfy all of your senses. This 12-acre expansion is the largest in Powell Gardens' history and is also the nation's largest "edible landscape." We hope you'll enjoy learning about the journey of food from seed to plate as you discover everything from pomegranates to peaches and soybeans to sweet corn!

The Entrance Gardens

A visit begins with the Menu Garden, an "appetizer," if you will, of what lies ahead. This garden is an example of a potager garden, a kitchen garden in the French country style. Vegetables, herbs and flowers mingle in a tapestry of colors and shapes that also provide food for the table.

In the adjacent Seed to Plate Greenhouse sprouting seeds illustrate the beginning of the botanical miracle that ultimately leads to the foods on our dinner plates. Down the path, the Apple Celebration Court showcases Missouri's finest apple varieties along a spiral brick walkway. The Pear Promenade and Peach Plaza will be a delight as spring blossoms transition to delicious fruits ripening throughout the season.

Plantings in the Vineyard evoke images of the South of France and California wine country. Grapes of all types will be planted with roses as a practical and beautiful companion. With intricate iron gates, trellises and a water feature, this space also will be available for private events.

Next you can explore the latest gardening trends in the Authors' Garden, where current philosophies of top garden writers will be brought to life in a rotating exhibit. This garden was designed by Rosalind Creasy, author of "The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping," and includes what will become a cherry tomato-covered tunnel and blackberry "fountain."
Across the way, you can explore a garden that marries high productivity with beauty. This garden was designed by Barbara Damrosch, author of "The Garden Primer." Damrosch, with her husband Eliot Coleman, owns Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden in Harborside, Maine.

The project’s tour de force is the Quilt Gardens. Each of these three-quarter acre plots will be planted in traditional “Old Missouri” and “Kansas Star” quilt patterns. The first “quilt” will focus on fruits and berries; another focuses on forage grasses; a third on Missouri farm crops such as corn and soybeans; and the last on vegetables. In this most intricate quadrant, you’ll find elaborately detailed plantings of vegetables, edible flowers and culinary herbs.

The Missouri barn will be an interpretive resource center, a place to rest and catch a sandwich or cold drink and peruse the satellite gift shop. The adjoining 45-foot silo becomes an overlook where you can take in a birds-eye view of the quilts below and the Missouri landscape. Alongside the barn, the Kansas City Power & Light All Electric Cooktop will provide ongoing demonstrations as well as in-depth cooking classes on the weekends.

Next up is the Fun Foods Farm, a youth education garden where children can dig in for hands-on learning about plant science, water conservation and nutrition using curriculum tied to Missouri and Kansas education standards.

By the time you reach the end of your journey, we hope you will have found the Heartland Harvest Garden a place to have fun, to be touched by beauty and to learn a lot!

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