At first glance, it’s just lettuce. But when Horticulturist Kelsie Birney began planning this year’s Burpee Kitchen Garden, she wasn’t thinking of typical rows for crops. Instead, she was thinking about patterns.
The young lettuces sweep through the four square beds in a gentle curve, showcasing the contrasting verdant chartreuse with deep purple varieties, creating movement and contrast the way a painter might brush big swaths of color. “Think of this like a canvas,” Kelsie told her coworker as they got underway. “Yes, we’re planting lettuce—but let’s have fun with it. Here are your paints. Go Paint!”
Much like any artist working within the boundaries of a blank page, Kelsie begins each season with a defined space but endless possibilities for what it might become. She provides the gardeners with the design, concept, and structure, then invites her team to paint within it. But unlike a painting hanging on a wall, the Kitchen Garden never stays the same for long.
“Yes, we’re planting lettuce—but let’s have fun with it. Here are your paints. Go Paint!“
Those carefully arranged spring -sown lettuces are eventually harvested, appearing on the Café menu and helping support our community through donations to the Bath Area Food Pantry.
Creating a garden this way requires a different way of thinking. The Kitchen Garden isn’t designed for a single perfect moment. Spring harvest makes room for tomatoes, peppers, beans, and other heat-loving plants. The palette and textures change the entire feeling of the space; the result is a garden that rewards repeat visits. A guest who visits in May experiences something entirely different from someone arriving in August.
More Than a Single Moment
As the horticulturist responsible for this space, Kelsie sees the Burpee Kitchen Garden as more than a place to grow food. It is a place to experiment, educate, inspire, and demonstrate how beauty and utility can exist side by side. “I love showing people that you can break out of the norms of gardening,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be a row. It can be an octagon. It can be a triangle.”
Unlike many spaces throughout the Gardens, the Burpee Kitchen Garden is composed almost entirely of annual plants. There are no mature shrubs or established perennials to serve as the backbone of the design year after year. Instead, the structure comes from elements such as the stone walls or the shape of the beds.
Planning often begins while the current season is still unfolding. Kelsie studies seed catalogs, researches new varieties, and draws inspiration from fellow gardeners, trial gardens, and sometimes from a single intriguing plant discovered by chance.
Some years, the design leans formal while other years it is loose and exuberant. This year’s garden explores regional cuisines.
Painting with Plants
Color, texture, shape, and pattern all play a role in how the Kitchen Garden comes together.
The deep blue green of kale, the airy texture of dill, the upright form of climbing beans—each contributes something different to the composition. Plants become an artistic medium.
Tomatoes may be tucked among flowers. Herbs weave throughout the beds. Edible flowers, such as nasturtium and snapdragons, can either become focal points or accents, proving that productivity and beauty are not mutually exclusive.
Beauty with Purpose
In the Kitchen Garden, plants earn their place through more than just beauty. Sweet alyssum (Lobularia maratima), which edges many of the beds, offers a perfect example. The blooms provide nectar for adult hoverflies while creating habitat for the next generation of these beneficial insects. Their larvae help control common garden pests like aphids and thrips, making the plant both attractive and functional.
The same thinking extends throughout the garden.
Some plants are selected to attract pollinators. Others help support beneficial insects. Certain varieties act as sacrificial plants, drawing pests away from more valuable crops. Every choice contributes to a larger ecological composition. The result is a garden where beauty and function work together rather than compete.
A Spirit of Curiosity
One season, Kelsie stumbled across a stevia plant in a seed catalog and decided to give it a try. Paired with mint, the result became what she affectionately calls her “bubblegum container”—a combination that visitors could sample for themselves. The sweet, minty flavors reminded many of chewing gum, creating an unexpected sensory experience.
Those moments of experimentation are part of what keeps the Burpee Kitchen Garden evolving. Every season presents an opportunity to test new varieties, explore new combinations, and discover unexpected relationships between plants.
Perhaps that’s the Kitchen Garden’s greatest lesson: There is room for artistry even in the most practical spaces. And that gardening can be as much an act of creativity as an act of cultivation. Not that visitors should recreate it exactly, but that they might leave seeing their own gardens differently.
Kelsie says, “Be bold. Pop an interesting, variegated pepper plant into your window box!” A flower can feed pollinators and delight people at the same time. Why choose between edible and ornamental when many plants can be both?
In the Kitchen Garden, the art isn’t hanging on a wall. It’s growing from the ground.
