Hershey Gardens is sporting a new 10-by-15-foot kitchen garden, designed by Kylie Wirebach, a 10th-grader at Conrad Weiser High School in Robesonia, Berks County.
Wirebach is the winner of a first-time scholarship design competition that Hershey Gardens and Hampden Twp.’s Ames True Temper Inc. staged this year for 10th through 12th graders in 12 midstate counties.
The kitchen garden is already in place just inside the main entrance to the Gardens’ 1-acre Children’s Garden and officially opens June 8 at 2 p.m. with an awards ceremony and “grand unveiling.”
Wirebach’s design was picked by the contest judges as the best of 17 entries submitted by 23 students at 10 different schools.
View full sizeKylie Wirebach planting a tomato at her kitchen garden at Hershey Gardens.
As part of the prize, Wirebach got to build her winning design with the Hershey Gardens staff.
The garden stays up for the 2014 season.
Wirebach also won a $1,200 prize, a collection of Ames True Temper tools for her school and a 1-year membership to Hershey Gardens.
Her design features 27 different edible varieties planted in a layout of three sizes of raised beds, two hanging planters and five trellises arranged in a novel zigzag pattern at the back of the garden for taller crops.
Wirebach says she first researched which plants made good “companions” with one another, then laid out groupings by space needed and similarities in growing habits (viners, root veggies, bushy herbs, big-leafs, etc.)
“I wanted to make it easy for people to get to them all but also save space,” she said. “The vertical trellises and square-foot-garden-style beds cleared room up for walking and kneeling space while putting the plants in their most comfortable fit. Finally, I hoped a zigzag line of towers and a crescent-shaped hideaway might give it a little more pizzazz.”
Wirebach says she spent weekends since last September researching kitchen gardens, using “a big stack of gardening books that my grandma gave me a while ago.”
She also used books from her school library and drew on her own first-hand experience growing radishes and cantaloupe last summer.
View full sizeKim Frew, left, of Hershey Gardens, looks over the kitchen garden design plan with Jodi, Kylie and Tabitha Wirebach.
“I love art and design as well as science and plants,” Wirebach said. “My dad is a graphic designer, and my mom is pretty creative, too. My grandpa got a degree in landscaping, so I got those interests from them.”
She’s thinking about a career in either writing about plants or animals or as a curator at a zoo or aquarium.
The design contest’s second-place prize-winner was a team of Cortland Daily, Emma Daily and Victoria Brame from the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Connections Academy cyber school.
Third place went to Hannah Fertich of the Adams County Christian Academy in Gettysburg, and fourth place went to Abigail Albright of Cumberland-Perry Vocational-Technical School in Silver Spring Twp.
Admission to the kitchen garden is included with admission to Hershey Gardens, which is $10.50 for adults, $9.50 for ages 62 and up, $7.50 for ages 3-12, and free for members and children under age 3.
Next year’s design competition will invite students to submit plans for a butterfly way station. Ames True Temper is again sponsoring the competition.
Details are on the Hershey Gardens website.
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