Student vegetables

Colorado potato beetles better dive for cover in the vegetable plot of Jeff Hicks. The little varmints graze on members of the nightshade family (potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers), but before they plunder the plants in Jeff's plot, he picks them off and puts them in the hand crusher.

Jeff is in second year at the Niagara Parks School of Horticulture, in Niagara Falls and designing and maintaining a vegetable garden is part of his course work. The mouthwatering plot is surrounded by split rail fence that barely contains the vegetables ready to bust out. There are onions, squash, tomatoes, corn, beans, pumpkins, chard and many herbs.

"My theme is days gone by, before people could buy everything they need to eat," Jeff says. And the garden grows without fertilizer, pesticides and supplemental water. He keeps a notebook on how plants perform; the tomatoes for instance would be bigger if he watered. And he regrets now, not following all the advice on how close to plant the vegetables. "They definitely grow better if you give them the proper space to develop. That would be my advice to new gardeners, follow the instructions on the seed packet. Remember that things grow. Otherwise you will be doing a lot of thinning out."

His garden in the student plot section of the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, is a mixture of utility and beauty. A weathered potting bench in one corner is the perfect place to ripen produce, in another corner gorgeous gourds snake up the branches of a white birch. "The tree was dead from bronze birch borer, so I collected the branches and lashed them together. It's almost like honouring an endangered species," says Jeff.

The same dead birch provided the material for a rough-hewn bench. "I built it right on site when I decided I needed a place to sit," says Jeff.

It's hard to imagine Jeff sitting. The horticulture students at Niagara Parks cram a lot of gardening into their three-year program, and many of them work after school designing and maintaining gardens in the area. Jeff also runs a side business growing gladiolas, about 80,000 of them in Strathroy. "If you see the sign for JH Glads in Strathroy, that's me," he says. He supplies the glads to a wholesale florist.

Throughout his garden and the formal vegetable gardens that the students maintain, flowers mix harmoniously with the vegetables. Sunflowers of all sizes, colours and heights spray out of the ground in their usual gregarious manner. Marigolds poke their rigid flowers to the sun, planted for their reputation as bug repellants. In Jeff's garden, cleome has self-seeded from parts unknown, but what a welcome intruder it is with its beauty salon pink flowers.

The students are free to be wacky and whimsical in their vegetable plot designs, but it's obvious they have also discovered the stunning beauty of some edible plants. The Swiss chard variety called 'Ruby Chard' lent its flashy profile to many plots. When the sun shines through the red stems, it's like looking into an erupting volcano. Ruby Chard is striking in the garden or containers-and delicious on the dinner table.

The baroque beauty of the cabbage was on display, as well as the sensuously textured kale called 'Nero di Toscano', and a handsome cauliflower called 'Brocoverde'. 'Nero di Toscano' kale is also called black palm kale because of its crinkled, fan shaped dark green leaves. After a light frost the leaves becomes full flavoured and sweet. It's a dramatic addition to any design.

All gardens could benefit by the growing cabbages and kale and they really hit their stride as cool weather approaches.

The students I talked to were all trying to demonstrate that the once homely vegetable garden doesn't have to be hidden from view. Handsome obelisks were used to grow beans; a statuesque arbor was the main support for tomatoes, which are after all, vines.

Ultimately though, the vegetables were so captivating because they were well cared for. The students at Niagara Parks get an intense grounding in horticulture, and it shows in what they grow. Jeff Hicks says his garden is abundant because of the time he put into the soil before planting, incorporating leaf mold, and compost. Now as vegetables ripen he shares them with his clients.

In another year he will graduate and I asked him what he planned to do with his horticulture skills and entrepreneurial spirit.

"I'd like to go to a third world country and do agricultural work," he says without hesitation.

Maybe they also teach compassion and commitment at Niagara Parks.