Fresh Greens from atop the Four Seasons Hotel

Story & Photography by Laura Hoover

On a sunny crisp afternoon in late September, 30-year-old Grace Wicks locks up her bike and crosses 18th Street. Carrying a basket filled with plant stakes and seeds, she says a quick hello to the doorman and climbs up nine stories.

A member of PHS's Young Friends group and owner of her own edible garden business, Wicks recently designed a rooftop garden at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia in Center City. The project was just another step in the hotel’s climb toward sustainability.

“The chef wanted a garden forever,” said Wicks, speaking of the hotel’s famed Chef Ralph Costobile, who has worked at the hotel’s Fountain Restaurant for more than 10 years. “I worked with him on what he would like. We installed it together.”

Several raised beds were already built and filled with compost when she joined the project in August. Wicks had spent a season working on the 6-acre Green Meadow Farm in Lancaster County. The owner, Glenn Brendle, recommended her to The Four Seasons.

Wicks (pictured at right) started Graceful Gardens, which specializes in ornamental edible gardens for high-end residential properties in Center City, two years ago. She studied horticulture and environmental studies and attributes her passion for food, urban gardening and the community to her upbringing. Her mother, Judy Wicks, started the famed White Dog Café.

The Gourmet-acclaimed Fountain Restaurant has been composting its leftover food since 2007. “We used to send 128 tons to the landfill,” said Marvin Dixon, director of engineering for The Four Seasons. “Now, it’s 600,000 pounds or less. We used to pay $120,000 a year in waste service. Now we’re paying $70,000.”

In the next few months, the hotel will complete installation of three micro-turbines on the roof. The system, to be landscaped with edible vines of native flowers by Wicks, is designed to generate enough power to heat the hot water for the hotel. “It was a tough fight to get them,” Dixon said. “But you have to. Just because we are the finest hotel in the city doesn’t mean we have to waste a lot.” Eventually, the hotel would like to generate enough electricity to run its air conditioning.

The garden includes nine raised beds filled with sugar snap peas, beets, radishes, cilantro, rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, parsley, Tuscan kale, Swiss chard, cabbage and broccoli. Wicks uses every square inch for production. For now, the herbs are going toward dishes in the hotel's staff cafeteria.

“The peas are looking good. It’s pretty dry up here,” Wicks says to Dixon. Dixon pulls out a hose and waters the beds.

Wicks is looking forward to expanding the edible garden, as well as landscaping the turbines. “You can see them from Logan Square. The roof will need to be something that makes a statement from a distance.”

Learn more about the PHS Young Friends Group here.