Restaurant Gardens

Chefs I work with in Charlotte keep asking the same question: how do I put my hands on the variety I want, not just the one the distributor carries this week? Sourcing is one answer; a self-grow setup on the property is the next one. Restaurant garden consulting is where the studio helps a kitchen move from buying herbs to walking out the back door for them.

A consult starts with a site walk — back patio, rooftop, side alley, a sunny pass-through window. I read the sunlight, the airflow, the water access, and how the kitchen actually moves during service. From there we build a soil and irrigation plan, a planting calendar tuned to the Piedmont season, and a maintenance handoff so a line cook or sous can keep it going without babysitting.

My mother used to grow what she couldn't find — that's the same impulse a chef has when they want a specific Thai basil or shiso leaf off the menu they built. The work is less about yield than about getting the exact variety the dish was written for: lemon verbena that tastes like lemon verbena, a chive flower picked an hour before service, a Carolina reaper the owner actually grew themselves.

Starting structures we'll talk through: a kitchen herb wall (basil, thyme, chive, sorrel, Thai basil), a stacked micro-greens tower for daily cutting, dwarf citrus and fig for plated garnish, a raised-bed rotation for shiso and bay laurel, and a cold frame to push the shoulder seasons a few weeks on either side. Small, well-chosen infrastructure, not a backyard farm.