A kitchen garden makes such sound sense for a restaurant, both financially and aesthetically, it’s no wonder they’re sprouting everywhere, from a full-scale, serious plot at a country lodge to a modest collection of potted herbs on a city rooftop. While few, if any, of the new gardener-chefs can be bothered with certification, most are effectively organic in that the crops are spray-free and grown with compost.

Diners appreciate knowing where produce comes from, so visiting the restaurant garden has now become part of the experience. At Oamaru’s Riverstone Kitchen, a predinner stroll around the 300-square-metre garden is a preview of the seasonal delights shortly to appear on your plate.

When Canterbury restaurateur Jonny Schwass is asked by a customer at Restaurant Schwass where the vegetables are from, he can truthfully reply “My Garden”, his wittily named rural property at West Melton, where his two business partners spend 30 hours a week cultivating 150 different varieties of herb and vegetable.

Jonny takes his chefs and waiters to help with planting and twice a week they walk up and down the rows, choosing what to pick for the menu. A massive spread of cultivars – 18 of tomato, for example, and 11 of carrot – opens up a whole new palette of colours and textures for the chefs.

“I try to get nature to do my presentation for me,” says Jonny, who famously undersells his dishes with simple titles like “beetroot with goat’s curd and hazelnut crumble”, then proceeds to deliver nine different types of beetroot on the plate, from the candy-striped chioggia, served with its own leaves, to the albino, the golden and the classic red.

Jonny sees his garden as a way of reconnecting with the earth and caring for it better. Restaurateurs, he says, tend to take more than they give. For other chefs, the motivation is less about idealism than saving money, considering some might spend $500 to $600 a month on fresh herbs over winter. When Adam Newell opened Zibibbo eight years ago in Wellington, he was also frustrated at not being able to buy sufficient quality or quantity of fresh herbs.

“How hard can it be to grow our own?” he and co-owner Anthony Shone asked each other. Now they are so well supplied from their gardens that they no longer buy in herbs.

Not that market gardeners need feel threatened by the rise of green-thumbed restaurateurs, since staples such as potatoes, cauliflowers and cabbages come so cheaply, there’s no point in chefs growing their own. Of more concern is the odd chef who bangs on about “salad leaves from my kitchen garden” – then just scatters a few token specimens over his bought-in sacks of hydroponic mesclun mix.

Awaroa Lodge Awaroa Bay,
Abel Tasman National Park,
ph: 03-528 8758, awaroalodge.co.nz

Awaroa Lodge is accessible only by air, sea or on foot, so fresh produce from the garden is a vital supplement to the barged-in supplies. A virtue has been made of necessity and the garden features funky sculptures made from recycled materials and decorative paths made of used glass. As one of New Zealand’s original eco-lodges, Awaroa remains a showcase for organic techniques, such as the Japanese bokashi system, in which inoculated sawdust is used as a pickling agent to speed up the composting process.

Bouterey’s at 251 251 Queen St, Richmond, Nelson,
ph: 03-544 1114, boutereys.co.nz

Chef-patron Matt Bouterey has an arrangement with a retired market gardener two minutes down the road, who, in exchange for the odd free meal, allows Matt to use his land to plant and grow produce for his restaurant. Other local market gardeners allow him to pick his own produce and the upshot is that mushrooms, celery and grapes are the only things Matt need buy in. Such is the mildness of Nelson’s climate, last year he harvested artichokes all year.

Poderi Crisci 205 Awaawaroa Rd, Awaawaroa Bay, Waiheke Island,
ph: 09-372 2148, podericrisci.co.nz

The recently opened restaurant at Poderi Crisci vineyard has been designed so the customer leaves the carpark and walks to the restaurant via the kitchen garden, full of tomatoes, artichokes, aubergines and other
glories of the Mediterranean.

Otahuna Lodge 224 Rhodes Rd, Tai Tapu, Christchurch,
ph: 03-329 6333, otahuna.co.nz

A hundred years ago, Otahuna was a grand country estate run on almost feudal lines, with its own dairy, orchard and garden. Since becoming a luxury lodge, this self-sufficiency has been taken to greater heights, with the
conversion of a potting shed into a mushroom house and the stonewalled former horse paddock into a kitchen garden. Pineapples grow in a hothouse and olive trees have been established, while apples, quinces and medlars still come from the original orchard. In the underground wine cellar, hunks of estate-raised pork and beef are hung to cure as prosciutto and bresaola, while the pantry features jars of preserved homegrown lemons.
Due to reopen on 10 January after post-earthquake restoration.

Rata Café Level 2, Zealandia Visitor Centre, 53 Waiapu Rd, Karori, Wellington,
ph: 04-922 1139, visitzealandia.com

At the end of each day at this café attached to the new visitor centre at Karori’s wildlife sanctuary, spent coffee grounds are scattered over the kitchen garden (snails hate them, as they dry up their slime). Vegetable peelings, in turn, feed a worm farm, from which juices are drained to use as a fertiliser.

Restaurant Schwass 190 Ferry Rd, Phillipstown, Christchurch,
ph: 03-371 9333, restaurantschwass.com

The menu at Restaurant Schwass has no need to mention the kitchen garden. This is because the vegetable selection on the plate is so recherché, the diners inevitably ask the waiters, “What’s this on the end of my fork?” and a warm fuzzy dialogue can then begin.

Riverstone Kitchen 1431 SH1 (12km north of Oamaru),
ph: 03-431 3505, riverstonekitchen.co.nz

When Bevan Smith was establishing his restaurant on a paddock next to a small apple orchard on his parents’ dairy farm in 2006, a cherry grove and a serious kitchen garden were central to the plan. Partly this was to supply himself with vegetables not grown locally and partly so he could control harvesting times – as Bevan points out, commercial growers invariably leave broad beans, for example, to grow too big. Thanks mainly to his mother, Dot, an avid gardener, Bevan and his wife, Monique, have since doubled the area under cultivation and have made the supreme winner of the Cuisine NZ Restaurant of the Year 2010 self-sufficient in herbs, vegetables, cherries and apples.

Zibibbo Restaurant & Bar 25-29 Taranaki St, Wellington,
ph: 04-385 6650, zibibbo.co.nz

Zibibbo has its original rooftop garden, accessed up a ladder and through a hatch, where herbs and salad leaves grow in recycled dishwasher racks, grease traps and mussel bins. However, the bulk of their supplies now comes from a much larger garden at 3 Terraces Vineyard in Martinborough, where chef Adam Newell’s father-in-law is growing asparagus between the vines – when he’s not stemming the proliferation of self-seeded globe artichokes!