Edible Garden

Come explore one of Bernheim’s most unique attractions - The Edible Garden. This four-acre site just across from Bernheim’s Visitor Center is designed to connect people with nature via the country’s most popular pastime – Gardening. Not only is the fresh grown food used daily at Isaac’s Café, but the Garden teaches visitors the connections between gardening and ecology.

The Edible Garden is also an applicant to the Living Building Challenge (LBC), meaning it is built to meet the most rigorous sustainable design standards in the world. There are only a few fully certified LBC projects across the globe and no others in Kentucky. LBC criteria focus on regenerative design, a step further than sustainable design efforts.

While sustainable building aims to leave no impact on the environment, regenerative design is building with the intent to actually help improve the natural environment and make it healthier than it was before. That’s why:

• The Garden’s Living Sculpture, RhizoLink, a Morse Code message made of straw baskets, is inoculated with helpful fungus to foster better plant growth.
• The 16 Solar Panels atop the Red Education Shed generate 5,000 kwh per year, enough to cover the amount the garden will use in a year – Net Zero Energy
• The Edible Garden uses only water from nature. The surrounding buildings and the garden itself is collected in cisterns and ponds.
• The Edible Garden practices companion planting which means growing plants in communities that help each other.

Learn more about the Edible Garden »