Designing Culinary Gardens Is Sara Gasbarra’s Dream Job. Gazing out the window at her educational workplace job, Sara Gasbarra discovered herself jealous of the landscapers who had been planting flowers alongside the sidewalk, and knew she needed to make a profession change.
And not using a plan, she stop and wracked her mind for what to do subsequent. “I made an inventory of all of the issues I felt enthusiastic about, hoping this might steer me in the fitting route,” she remembers. “Meals, gardening, eating places, and sustainability had been on the very high.”
Volunteering at Chicago’s high farmers market allowed Gasbarra to the touch on all these pursuits — and led to her launching her culinary backyard design enterprise, Verdura, in 2011.
Designing Culinary Gardens Is Sara Gasbarra’s Dream Job
She started by partnering with Sandra Holl, a pastry chef who had been a vendor on the market. Holl was about to open Floriole Cafe & Bakery on the time, and requested to develop edible flowers and aromatics for her famend desserts.
Although Gasbarra by no means studied agriculture or panorama design (she went to varsity for artwork), she grew up in a household of avid gardeners and expert house cooks.
“I spent each summer time with my Italian father tending to our yard backyard and watching him rework our ruby pink tomatoes into probably the most scrumptious of sauces in our kitchen,” she recollects. “Studying from him on this casual setting made me an intuitive gardener.”
This pure inexperienced thumb led Gasbarra to success in Chicago, and she or he was capable of decide up new restaurant shoppers like Bastion, the Catbird Seat, and Locust when she moved to Nashville in 2019.
When the hospitality trade shut down throughout the pandemic, she pivoted to constructing residential culinary gardens for cooks like Julia Sullivan of Henrietta Purple. Right here, Gasbarra shares the main points of how she created her dream job.
What does your job contain? What’s your favorite half about it?
I spend most of my days outdoors, surrounded by greenery, greens, and flowers. I couldn’t consider a greater solution to spend the day. Even when it’s dreary and chilly within the spring and I’m hauling a great deal of compost within the rain, it nonetheless feels fairly magical.
I’ve 15 gardens for the time being, and I spend my weeks rotating between them. The morning backyard is so completely different from the late afternoon backyard, and I all the time take a second to understand the time of day, the sunshine, the sounds, and the colors throughout each go to.
What would shock folks about your job?
It actually is tough and laborious work! And it’s not all the time lovely. We reside in an Instagram world the place we’re offered with pictures of perfection, magnificence, and ease — and gardening is rather more than this. Gardens are lovely, however they may also be ugly, advanced, overgrown, and chaotic.
The act of gardening entails harvesting lovely greens and flowers, but in addition arduous labor that isn’t all the time nice or fairly. I attempt to encourage folks to embrace their backyard when it’s thriving and exquisite, but in addition when it’s in decline, as there may be immense magnificence on this stage, too.
And the tutorial side of gardening by no means actually ends! I’m continually studying and perfecting this craft and striving to be a greater gardener.
Annually, my tasks current me with new challenges and successes. The gardener I used to be again in 2011 is actually not the identical gardener I’m in 2023, and I believe this interprets to any occupation within the culinary world. You be taught a lot by doing and it takes years.
How did you get into the Culinary Backyard Trade?
I had shopped at Inexperienced Metropolis Market, Chicago’s premiere farmers market, for a number of years and knew that that they had a volunteer program, so I started volunteering there in 2009.
I labored each single market shift, each market day, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. I used to be so drawn to the group of farmers, cooks, and buyers at Inexperienced Metropolis Market — it was a really particular place the place I used to be surrounded by like-minded individuals who felt the identical pleasure for seasonality and sustainability that I did.
The market additionally runs a 5,000-square-foot instructional backyard and I finally began working there, operating programming, main area journeys, and planning the backyard — specializing in extra uncommon and heirloom types of greens.
Round this time, Instagram had simply launched and I started posting pictures of every part I used to be rising within the backyard, whereas additionally following lots of the cooks I had met by the farmers market.
Cooks and restaurateurs quickly started to achieve out to me, after seeing infinite posts of unusual however lovely wanting tomatoes, inquiring if I may assist them arrange gardens on-site at their eating places and that’s how Verdura took root.
What was the most important problem you confronted if you had been beginning out within the trade?
My understanding of cooking was sturdy, however fairly standard after I first began the enterprise. For instance, I used herbs in my very own kitchen in probably the most simple manner: I solely used the leaves. I had no concept that the flowers supplied such concentrated taste and had been additionally used as a manner so as to add coloration and wonder to no matter it was I used to be making.
I recall rising cucumbers for a chef and having moments of intense anxiousness as a result of for months the vines weren’t producing fruit. I then discovered the kitchen was solely harvesting the yellow blooms from the crops.
These tiny, fuzzy, petite flowers had such fantastic cucumber taste. My thoughts was blown. Twelve years later, I’m so grateful for all the issues I’ve realized from the gifted cooks I’ve had the pleasure of working with. My house backyard displays this, as does my cooking.
How did the Pandemic have an Effect on your Profession?
I briefly misplaced all of my restaurant tasks throughout the pandemic, when every part shut down. It was a fairly terrifying second of uncertainty for me, because it was for all the eating places I used to be working with.
Nevertheless, the pandemic opened up a brand new alternative for me right here in Nashville. Individuals had been caught at house, desperately on the lookout for an enticing exercise they may do outdoors with the household, so I had folks reaching out to me about designing and constructing residential culinary gardens.
It was a fairly sudden pivot, however one which made complete sense on the time and has now led me to a profitable new department of my enterprise, constructing gardens for personal residences. Most of the households I work with now love the thought of making a backyard from a chef’s perspective.
What recommendation would you give somebody who needs your job?
Put together to spend years educating your self on the job — there may be solely a lot you may be taught in books and conventional lecture rooms. The perfect “classroom” is the backyard and it is a lifelong program. Be ready for failure and actually embrace it when it occurs. Failure is such an excellent factor, particularly in gardening.
Comply with cooks who’ve gardens on social media and watch how they make the most of what they’re rising. Preserve a house backyard, even when it’s small, and use it to experiment. Mess around in your individual kitchen. Understanding tips on how to use the elements you’re rising is simply as necessary because the act of rising them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
