The Arizona Diamondbacks have a hot tub, the Kansas City Royals have a waterfall, and soon the San Francisco Giants will have in their centerfield an organic vegetable garden. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, the “ambitious project, dubbed the Giants Garden, calls for a 3,000-square-foot organic garden to be planted behind the center-field wall, a space between the left- and right-field bleachers that is now mostly concrete and the area where replacement sod is grown.”
Buzz about the organic stadium garden has even reached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Barack Obama, whose first lady Michelle has made famous her own “White House Kitchen Garden,” commented on the project during the Giants’ recent 2012 World Series victory visit to the White House.
“With rows of kale and strawberries and eggplant, the Giants are going to help encourage local youth to eat healthy–even at the ballpark,” said Obama.
The president’s remarks, however, did come with a side of caution:
“I should add, even Michelle would say it’s okay to have a hotdog once in a while, though. I don’t want everybody to get carried away and think they have to have kale every time they go to the ballpark.”
As The San Francisco Chronicle details, the garden, a “partnership between the Giants and Bon Appetit Management Co.,” will be the “first such facility at any professional sports venue.” Ostensibly, the garden will be “used to supply food for the park’s catering operations,” but it also will serve as “an open-air restaurant and [a] community classroom.”
“We really wanted to be able to do something that is not just very San Francisco, but a part of today’s world,” said Giants president and CEO, Larry Baer.
“Giants Garden” is scheduled for debut on Opening Day 2015.
In the meantime, let’s only hope the union representing AT&T Park concession workers and management successfully agree on a new contract before next spring. The arugula, brocolini, and Persian cucumbers, as MLB fans soon may learn, are not going to serve themselves.