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Organic Hotel Gardens Signal Emerging Trends There is still time to be at the forefront of this movement, and hoteliers using them say it’s great for food quality and attracting discerning guests. Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Beth Kormanik

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The realization that he had something special came to Anthony Sicignano, executive chef for restaurant operations at The Breakers Palm Beach, during a recent late afternoon walk to the resort's garden to pick some herbs for dinner.

"I get out there, and there are four hotel guests camped out with a picnic basket and bottle of wine," recalled Sicignano. "They said, 'We love it here.' When we started the garden, I thought, 'Great we'll have fresh produce to use in our restaurants.' I was surprised with how much our guests love it."

Although The Breakers has had an herb garden for years, it was about a year ago that the garden was revitalized and expanded. And it has made all the difference. The 1,000-square-foot parcel now features an assortment of organic micro greens, vegetables and herbs that are used in all eight of the resort's restaurants, as well as a worm farm for composting. Eventually Sicignano would like to plant mango, papaya and banana trees throughout the property.

As more people want to know exactly where their food comes from, the hotel vegetable and herb garden is growing in popularity. Organic gardens, which differ from traditional farms by not using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, are particularly desirable.

Bill Duesing, Interstate Council president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, said hotels are a natural extension of the trend toward local gardens, following restaurants, colleges, schools and everyday citizens with backyard gardens. Even the Obamas recently started a garden at the White House, at the behest of organic food advocates. Duesing, whose nonprofit organization represents 5,000 farmers, gardeners and consumers, has a chef working on his own Connecticut farm a few days a week.

"It seems like an idea whose time has come," Duesing said. "There's increasing evidence that if you're growing vegetables, organic is as easy as or easier than any other form. Especially as a chef, can you imagine spraying some kind of poison on your food and then serving it to your customer? That would be crazy."

Other organic farming experts agree.

"It's not a fad or uniquely spotted at the highest end [of hotels]," said Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. "Anecdotally I've been experiencing or observing this for a number of years now. In the last year or so it's become a trend where before it was unique to a particular chef or brand. Now this has become a direction that just about everybody wants to go."

Hotels are investing in their own gardens, not only for better tasting food but for business purposes. A restaurant menu featuring items grown on the property may retain guests who otherwise would leave the property for meals, or it could bring in banquet and convention business that requires a specialized menu. "A percentage of them are in fact willing to pay more for [organic] meals," Scowcroft said. "The customer who says, 'I love your organic breakfast; I'll be back next year,' is what you're all about. Customer satisfaction, return rates. That's where organic and fresh food and room service can lead to a bonanza."

The Bardessono, a luxury resort in Napa Valley, CA, incorporated plans for two organic gardens when it was designing the new, eco-conscious property, which opened February 2. It features a smaller "kitchen garden" of common and uncommon herbs on site, and a larger garden located about a mile away on land leased from a local family. The hotel's grounds also include an edible landscape of pineapple guava bushes, artichokes, and fennel. The bounty is used in the resort's restaurant, bar and even in spa products and room amenities such as a homeopathic sleep patch that contains lavender-based essential oil to help guests sleep at night.

The idea behind the garden was to give guests a unique experience, according to Cristina Salas-Porras, director of guest experience. Bardessono will begin offering cooking lessons using the garden as a classroom this summer. Already, the plantings are situated along a community path and labeled.

"We are in an agricultural area that is rich in product, so we wanted to celebrate that at the hotel," she said. "People can forage and harvest at the garden and make things. A lot of people don't have that experience at home."

The gardens are still in their infancy, but ultimately the hotel anticipates providing the kitchen with 100 percent of the tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, peppers and eggplants during the height of their seasons. It will focus more on the unusual varieties not found in the marketplace such as violet artichokes and Bhut Jolokia pepper, known as the hottest chili pepper in the world. It also is growing some 16 varieties of basil so guests can appreciate the diversity in just one crop.

"It's our first growing cycle," Salas-Porras said. "You have to see how things grow and how they taste. I'm sure it will be a lot of trial and error."

A complement to the organic garden is a composting program. The Breakers composts melon rinds and other food scraps, which then become soil for the garden. Bardessono plans to do the same to have black soil for the garden.

Although hotel gardens technically compete with produce suppliers, neither The Breakers nor Bardessono has cancelled any contracts. Salas-Porras said the resort will grow items they have not found locally or those they have a keen interest in. For The Breakers, the garden is too small to fill its vast produce needs, especially since the growing season in South Florida is so short.

"The garden is such a small scale," Sicignano said. "It wouldn't even make a dent in what we purchase."

Sicignano also noted that it's not easy to farm a consistent product, especially in the tough growing climate of South Florida. But he is proud of The Breakers' efforts.

"Three years ago I never could have envisioned it. You start talking about it and think, it'll be too tough," he said. "In that regard, it's surpassing my expectations. It is a bit more challenging than I thought, too. Once you're growing the produce, you have to ask, does it taste good? Is it consistent?"

Right now, the garden is playing a supporting role in dishes such as an heirloom tomato salad with vegetable vinaigrette. The resort purchases the tomatoes from a supplier but pulls its own chives, parsley and root vegetables for the vinaigrette. In other dishes, the chefs use their creativity to make use of the garden's bounty.

"You see what's available and do something with what's picked that day," Sicignano said. "That's exciting to me and the other chefs. You could have chefs come out and harvest what they can."

Both The Breakers and Bardessono reap the marketing benefits of their harvest by noting on their menus when products come from their own gardens. Unlike large-scale organic farms, hotels do not have to seek organic certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to legally use the organic label, according to Scowcroft of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. Some restaurants pursue that designation, he said, but it's not necessary as long as the hotel is not selling the produce off site for profits of $5,000 or more.

What hotels pursuing a garden do need is a dedicated staff to plan and manage it. Salas-Porras said Bardessono has a full-time culinary gardener on staff.

"It's not something you can let landscaping people do, or someone who is just interested in gardening," she said. "It requires someone's attention and constant care."

The results, she added, are worth the effort. Especially this time of year, when the lemon trees begin to bloom.

"They have thousands of blossoms," she said. "It smells incredible.”