"The Edible Garden" opens Saturday at the New York Botanical Garden

On Saturday, the New York Botanical Garden kicks off a summer-long celebration of great food and how to grow it.






Called "The Edible Garden," the gardenwide programming will include a dozen vegetable gardens; a flower show in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory called "Tropical Fruits, Roots and Shoots;" Thursday evening events with music, and wine and beer tastings; celebrity food presentations; cooking demonstrations in a new outdoor kitchen; and two festival weekends - this weekend and another in September - celebrating local, sustainable food, gardening and global cuisine.



The goal of the exhibits and programs is to focus on the role that plants play in our everyday lives and to connect people with plants and the good food they produce.



Lots of big names from the food world, including Emeril Lagasse, Lidia Bastianich, Daisy Martinez, Sunny Anderson and Anne Burrell, will be at the Botanical Garden this summer for demonstrations and lectures.



Mario Batali and Bette Midler will narrate an audio tour for visitors, with commentary by Dan Barber, the chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills. Earlier this year, Barber won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in America and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People.



He will be among the chefs for the opening weekend on Saturday and Sunday along with Martha Stewart, Johnny Iuzzini of Jean Georges, Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern, Michel Nischan of Dressing Room, Peter Hoffman of Savoy and Aida Mollenkamp, host of Food Network's Ask Aida.



One of the highlights of "The Edible Garden," which runs until Sept. 13, will be a redesign of the Botanical Garden's historic herb garden by Stewart and her team of gardening gurus. Stewart, who gardens and farms in Katonah, has chosen more than 50 herbs for the new garden, including cardoon, curry, golden-edged salvia, five kinds of basil, four thymes and three lavenders. Handmade pots by Ben Wolff of Goshen, Conn., will sit on the edges of the boxwood-lined garden, planted with parsley and violas for spring and scented geranium, oregano and rosemary for summer.
Other displays include a beginner's vegetable garden, a pizza garden, a breakfast bowl bed, an heirloom vegetable garden sponsored by Seed Savers Exchange and a Food Network-sponsored garden in the Home Gardening Center that will be donated to the Botanical Garden after the show.



The Arthur and Janet Ross Gallery in the library building will feature 34 color portraits by Victor Schrager that pay homage to food writer Amy Goldman's prized heirloom tomatoes.



The "Edible Evenings: A Celebration of Wine, Beer and Food" will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on seven Thursdays in July and August. They will feature cooking demonstrations by local chefs and concerts during four of the evenings.



A farmers market will be open for business from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays until Nov. 14.



Present plans call for a repeat of "The Edible Garden" for the summer of 2010.



The 250-acre Botanical Garden is at Bronx River Parkway (Exit 7W) and Fordham Road in the Bronx. For more information, call 718-817-8700 or visit nybg.org.