Mario Batali’s Vertical Garden Wall

We will be back to the recipes shortly, but stumbled upon this tonight and fell in love.  Chef Mario Batali and Good Earth Plants with GreenScaped Buildings have constructed an edible garden wall outside of his Pizzeria Mozza restaurant in LA.

Mario says:  “Clearly the vertical garden isn’t big enough to really harvest on a regular basis, we’re certainly not sending our produce purveyors home with their tails between their legs, but what for us it represents is a visual image of exactly what we think people should be thinking about.  It’s beautiful, I think it looks great, it’s totally green, but what it represents is the idea that we should be greening our society, we should be thinking about ways to be more local, to be more organic, to be more fresh.”

Composed of dandelions, marigolds, geraniums, and 20 different varieties of herbs, the edible vertical wall is self sustaining, and is watered with connected vertical supports.    According to Elizabeth Meltz, Director of Food Safety and Sustainability for the Batali / Bastianich Hospitality Group, this is only one of several methods Batali is using to green up his restaurant venues.   Others include a bottled water ban, full scale recycling and composting programs, LED rechargeable candles, and energy efficient faucet aerators and kitchen appliances.

Once again Mario, we salute you.

Watch the video here.