Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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photography by Katrina WittKamp S ara Gasbarra's green thumb has always been a little off-kilter. Her Italian father steered her toward traditional vegetable fare, teach- ing her to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in their Glenview garden. But Gasbarra felt an attraction to more unusual plants. "I always wanted to grow weird stuff," admits the 37-year-old, who studied art his- tory at DePaul University but found herself more interested in returning to garden goddess With Verdura, Sara GaSbarra plants the seeds that help businesses groW. by matt kirouac Glenview to tend her parents' garden. Early on, that "weird stuff" meant caulif lower and watermelon; later, when her passion for gardening drew her to volunteer at Green City Market's childcentric Edible Gardens, it sig nified even more exotic foods. "We did an Asian row of things like Japanese rat-tailed radishes, which no one had seen before," she says, reminiscing about her days of teaching youngsters about veggies like cow- peas, okra, and collard greens. These days, t he La kev iew resident ca n grow anything she wants—and she does, as founder of the custom garden installation company Verdura, which she established in 2011 after her horticultural skills drew the attention of businesses like Floriole Café & Ba ker y a nd H ilton Ch icago. Ta k ing on Hilton as a client , Gasba r ra says, "forced me to come up w it h a business pla n a nd a name." That name, the Italian word for "vegetable," hearkens to both her heritage and her lifelong passion for produce. The company specializes in custom crop instal- lat ions a nd sea son-long ma intena nce for hospitality clients, including Palmer House H ilton, where, t h ree f loors beneat h t he hotel, Gasbarra has installed a farm with pola r white a nd pink oyster mushrooms, which she expects to harvest in July. Services begin with a consultation and site visit by Gasbarra, who determines the scope of the project and which crops to grow. She then installs irrigation sys- tems w it h automat ic t imers, pla nt ing in spr ing a nd v isit ing each ga rden ever y t wo weeks t hereafter for upkeep t h rough fa ll. For t he It a lia n Village rest au- rants, for example, she grows only a few crops in large quantities, such as tomatoes, basil, and arugula ("They did a fantastic tomato production with 15 plants, and t hey were taking tomatoes off their roof all summer long," Gasbarra notes of last year's harvest), while for t he Sout h Loop f ine - dining ma inst ay Acadia, she focuses on "daintier" specialty products—think edible f lowers, microg reens, va r ious basils—t hat she tends to in a sma ller ga rden. About her client s, she says, "They're all really fun because they're all really unique." While gardening is now Gasbarra's profession, it's also still her passion— and she delights in taking her work home to her Ukrainian Village garden, where she grows sylvetta arugula, Mexican sour gherkins ("They're like baby watermelons"), Thai basil, and garnet mustard. "Growing up, it was tradi- tional Italian," she says. "Now I get to be creative." verdurachicago.com MA InsIght Wake-up call: "in the morning, there's nothing i savor more than sitting outside with an iced americano at caffe Streets." Works of art: "i collect art books and have several signed first-edition books by Judy chicago." Sara Gasbarra, seen here at Green city market, is the secret behind the vegetables served at many top chicago hotels and restaurants. 58 michiganavemag.com talent patrol