Winnipeg’s ‘Ultimate Garden’ Is Also Growing Culinary Pleasures

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Visitors at The Leaf can enjoy several biomes including the Hartley and Heather Richardson Tropical Biome, the Mediterranean Biome, Babs Asper Display House, and the Shirley Richardson Butterfly Garden. The Leaf comprises almost 30 acres of gardens and green space. (Photo courtesy of The Leaf at Assiniboine Park)

The first thing I did as I ventured through the tropical paradise that is the Hartley and Heather Richardson Tropical Biome was take a picture to send my mother. Within minutes I was on the phone with her.

“Mom, you won’t believe this place,” I said with raw excitement to a woman who I know lives in topsoil. “They have bananas here. They have coffee here. They have jackfruit and starfruit here. It’s like being back at Grannie’s house in St. Kitts. You would love this place. It’s the ultimate garden.”

It’s also the ultimate pantry, which is the reason chef Mike DeGroot of Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar has a pretty cool job. After all, how many Canadian chefs can boast they work in a restaurant that exists in an attraction that can grow its own bananas and jackfruit? It’s certainly unexpected anywhere, certainly so in northerly Winnipeg, home to The Leaf at Assiniboine Park.

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Chef Mike DeGroot of Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar shows off his meatball dish. DeGroot often uses vegetables and fruit grown at the Leaf in his creations. (Photo Courtesy of The Leaf at Assiniboine Park)

The Leaf, which opened December 3, 2022, is a spectacular $130-million horticultural landmark that features a conical 90,000-square-foot design housing four distinct biomes.

“It’s been really awesome to watch people’s reaction from the day we opened the door,” says Sara Wolowich Brown, communications coordinator at Assiniboine Park Conservancy. “It’s been a mix of surprise and awe and happiness and it’s just been a really neat experience to watch people make connections to the plants. You can walk up to a plant and say I’ve seen this plant before, look at how cool that is, my grandmother used to grow it, or maybe my mom used to eat this in the country she lived before she moved to Canada. It’s a very meaningful place.”

It’s a statement that rang true. As I walked by a banana tree, wrapped in a coat of tiny green fruit shaped like baby fingers I remembered visiting my grandmother’s house as a child, watching her grab fresh mangoes through her window and thinking it was the coolest thing. The gardens outside The Leaf brought back memories of toiling with my mother in her vegetable garden in Grey County, Ontario, her disinterested son still too young to appreciate the joy of growing and eating his own food.  It also brought back memories of family trips and outstanding meals shared with friends.

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Banana plants grow in the humid, tropical regions of Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia where there are high temperatures and rainfall. Surprisingly, they also can be found in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (Rod Charles photo for Vacay.ca)

Which is fitting because the many vegetables grown here actually do end up being turned into outstanding meals. The Leaf might be a glistening attraction and a horticultural walk down memory lane for tourists but for DeGroot it’s an extension of his kitchen where local and international flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits are grown.

“Especially now that the biomes are really starting to come into their own there’s a growing process when there are first plants and everything. But now we’re starting to get large bunches of bananas, coffee, cherries — things that you would not get in Winnipeg,” said DeGroot. “So to be able to go to the table with our first bunch of bananas from the biome and make a toasted burrito with banana caramel and a chunky monkey ice cream and to be able to place it in front of a customer and tell them the bananas were grown 40 feet away to your right. These are the only local bananas that our local customers are ever going to see.”

The Leaf is a spectacular indoor facility. The Shirley Richardson Butterfly Garden is six storeys high and where visitors can look over the tallest indoor waterfall in Canada. The stunning feature is the brainchild of Canadian artist Dan Euser, who also designed the water feature at the National September 11 Memorial in New York City.

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Reaching approximately six stories in height, Canada’s tallest indoor waterfall is a stunning feature at The Leaf. You can get a view from the top when visiting the butterflies. (Rod Charles photo for Vacay.ca)

The Mediterranean Biome is home to plants from regions known for their superb fruits, fine wines, and abundant crops. Babs Asper Display House features a rotating schedule of dynamic floral displays

My exploration began at the Hartley and Heather Richardson Tropical Biome. Featuring exotic plants and a balmy environment, the oasis creates excellent growing conditions for fruits and vegetables you would not normally find north of the Rio Grande. But here they are alive and well in Winnipeg.

The term “farm to table” has become somewhat cliché but Gather does a good job of using ingredients to deliver what could be called “garden to table” cuisine. The whole facility is surrounded by The Gardens at The Leaf where you can experience six distinct growing areas spring through fall, including a Kitchen Garden that supplies Gather.

“Nothing we grow here gets wasted,” one of the workers told me as he harvested. “We send everything we harvest to the compost or the kitchen to create meals at the restaurant at Gather. Or we will send it to the zoo if it’s not edible for humans to eat. Even the weeds, we will bring it to compost so that it can be used in the gardens again.”

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Horticultural and interpretive displays, educational programs, special events, and interactive experiences explore the human connection with plants and nature. It’s also a great place to get quiet and chill with the family. (Rod Charles photo for Vacay.ca)

When DeGroot finished culinary school and arrived at Assiniboine’s Park Café, he had already had some experience but hadn’t settled on the idea of being a chef.  A decade later, he is now the head of the attraction’s flagship restaurant. With lettuce, carrots, onions, and sunflowers being grown outside — along with more exotic vegetables — it’s difficult not to experiment with items other chefs don’t have the fortune to access. DeGroot spoke about experimenting with coffee, since Gather gets a lot of the ripe coffee cherries, a product that would be difficult to source and unreasonably expensive, if not for The Leaf’s gardens. So to be able to say they are working on a coffee cheesecake dessert with locally grown processed coffee is a wonderful advantage.

“We get to tell a really unique story about food, and it’s very unique when people can go to the biomes, see that plant growing, and then come sit in the restaurant and get that experience of seeing that whole life cycle of that produce,” DeGroot said.

Assiniboine Park, Chef Mike DeGroot , Gather Craft Kitchen & Bar, Manitoba, The Leaf , THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK , Winnipeg

Cold, smoked arctic char from Lake to Plate fishery, sauerkraut aioli, new potato salad, caraway, and Yukon potato chips are served at Gather. (Rod Charles photo for Vacay.ca)

Wolowich Brown agreed.

“We’ve used the different fruits that are growing in the tropical biome. We used the starfruit in a feature dish in Gather. We’ve also helped some plants that were almost extinct recover,” she notes. “So the Wollemi pine was one of our featured plants that we have at the Mediterranean biome and there’s one at the tropical biome. Those plants are extremely rare. In fact, they were thought to be extinct until they found a patch of them surviving in Australia. So it’s very special that we get to have those trees here and care for those trees here and preserve them otherwise people would never, ever get to see that tree.”

MORE ABOUT THE LEAF AT ASSINIBOINE PARK AND GATHER CRAFT KITCHEN & BAR

Website: Visit The Leaf and Gather websites for more info on each.
Location: 145 The Leaf Way, Winnipeg, Manitoba (see map below)

Rod has previously worked for Canoe.ca and is currently freelancing for Huffington Post Travel. He’s also written travel articles for the Toronto Star and Up! Magazine. Living in Toronto but raised in the small central Ontario village of Holstein, Rod is a country boy at heart who has never met a farmer’s market he didn’t like.