Powell Gardens, a non-profit botanical garden, is about 30 miles east of Kansas City on U.S. Highway 50 on the western edge of Johnson County.

The Heartland Harvest Garden “…12-acre expansion is the largest in Powell Gardens’ history and is also the nation’s largest ‘edible landscape’….”

The point of all of this is to educate visitors about the plants we do and can eat. Everything is labeled and explanatory signs abound for each portion of the walking tour.

Prairie flowers in a field looking west toward Kansas City.

Yes Powell Gardens still does flowers. Lots of them.

On to the edible stuff:

….In the…Seed to Plate Greenhouse sprouting seeds illustrate the beginning of the botanical miracle that ultimately leads to the foods on our dinner plates….

On the walk between the seed sprouting greenhouses and the designed quilt gardens is a home gardener’s dream, with neat rows of a wide variety of edible plants. I tromped into that garden to talk a few photos:

I have no idea. I couldn’t find a label to identify the plant. And yes, it’s completely black.

The interior of the observation silo. You can take the stairs or an elevator to get to the observation deck.

….Quilt Gardens…Each of these three-quarter acre plots are planted in traditional “Old Missouri” and “Kansas Star” quilt patterns. The first “quilt” focuses on fruits and berries; another focuses on forage grasses; a third on Missouri farm crops such as corn and soybeans; and the last on vegetables. In this most intricate quadrant, you’ll find elaborately detailed plantings of vegetables, edible flowers and culinary herbs….

The view of the Quilt Gardens from the top of the observation silo.

It took a great deal of self restraint to not pick the raspberries and eat them.