A farm to fork experience with lush vegetable garden

For more than 20 years, the chefs at Fairmont Hotels and Resorts have brought their own garden fresh herbs and vegetables to the plates of Fairmont guests around the world. Many of these innovative chefs led the way by creating the first restaurant gardens in their communities.

Fairmont’s 28 gardens are special places where produce is grown organically with no herbicides or pesticides. The Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto and the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver were the first to begin the urban farming project to feed their kitchens. Chefs at other Fairmont hotels in Boston, Montreal, Bermuda, and Washington soon followed.

The hotels now grow thyme, chives, rosemary and tarragon in their rooftop gardens, whether atop a tower or in the midst of a courtyard.

Many of them include beehives, composting and other features. What had started as an unusual practice by kitchen staff is now a standard practice worldwide across the chain, as illustrated in three of its Canadian hotels.

A true advocate for organic cuisine, Fairmont Mt Kenya Safari Club now offers its diners an exuberating farm-to-fork experience, conveniently set on the property grounds. Even their Norfolk property has some herbs and vegetables in a small patch at the back.

Green initiative

One of the most successful green initiatives at the Mt Kenya hotel, the garden is being utilised to grow herbs and vegetables that the establishment can then use in its kitchen for dishes served in its restaurants, including the estimable Tusks Restaurant, Zebar Lounge and the private William Holden dining area.

The hotel’s herb garden is hidden in an undisturbed area of the vast estate, and is truly a well-executed gardening system.

Each cultivated bed is filled with soil made from composted waste from the hotel. The farm collects food waste from the hotel, takes it back to the farm where it is turned into compost, and then delivers it back as a custom blend of nutrient-rich compost.

Beetroots, mixed lettuce, Swiss chard, mustard greens, lettuce, coriander, endive, celery, purple carrots, yellow carrots, green asparagus and many more varieties are farmed in this eco-friendly system.

Organic lunch

The relaxing atmosphere in combination with its fine aesthetics makes it an ideal venue for meals, coffees or drinks from early noon till late at night. Guests can indulge in an idyllic organic lunch against a scenic backdrop formed by acreage of the herb and vegetable garden.

Expert chefs can toss up lavish garden salads with guests preferences put into consideration. Guests also have the option of adding other organic ingredients such us Platinum Morendat Beef from Naivasha or locally sourced trout fish from the Nanyuki area, to accompany their salad dish.

The good news is that it’s not only in hotels where you can have a lush, organic vegetable garden with compost made from food waste.

Even in your own home, you can separate waste from your kitchen from other waste, allow it to turn into compost (okay, you may not want all the worms wiggling around, yet these are the organisms that break down the waste into usable compost).

Then use this in your vegetable patch. This is especially easy for those who live in houses with compounds.

Instead of burning your kitchen waste in a pit and in the process degrading the environment, put all those potato peels and other degradables in a mound of soil and when it’s ready, use it on your small shamba.