Food prepared in the kitchen at Inn at the Forks will be grown and harvested directly on site in the coming years.
As part of The Forks’ Target Zero initiative, a new urban garden and orchard will be planted with fruit and nut trees. Produce will then be sold to local restaurants and guests at the hotel will be treated to eating ingredients grown mere steps away.
The orchard will feature apple, pear, cherry, plum, fig, persimmon, and lemon trees, and as many as 75 fruit bearing shrubs. It will take roughly five years before the trees begin bearing fruit.
A space in the middle of the fruit trees will be used as an outdoor classroom.
“We’ve always wanted to do a project like this at The Forks but we’ve never found a sustainable way to do it,” said Paul Jordan, chief operating officer of The Forks. “We are treating this summer like a test run. Once we work out the logistics we hope to expand upon this year’s garden and invest in a larger space.”
The Forks partnered with Winnipeg Community Orchards for Resources and Education (CORE) on the project, who approached the market last spring after 53 diseased choke cherry trees were removed and a vacant space became available for future planting.
