If you’re traversing Chicago’s 606 elevated park in Bucktown and look down to see a spectacularly lush and colorful landscape, you’ve found the Bayless Gardens.

Text description by rickbayless.com

The sun-soaked 1000 square-foot backyard area is the main production garden where 13 raised planter beds produce a bounty of specialty salad greens, edible flowers and herbs destined for Rick’s restaurants. The garden beds are in production for 8 months of the year, yielding over 700 pounds of salad greens, 65,000 edible flowers, 250 pounds of herbs and 100 pounds of butternut squash. In the cooler fall and winter months, production moves indoors to a 150 square-foot heated greenhouse, 60 square-foot unheated outdoor greenhouse and an indoor light garden, yielding another 150 pounds of salad and microgreens, several thousand edible flowers and another 50 pounds of herbs.