Skip to footer

At Boston’s Fenway Park, a different Green Monster

With the opening of a vegetable garden on the roof of the oldest baseball park in the United States, the Boston Red Sox became the latest Major League Baseball team to feature more green than just a perfectly manicured field.

|
Shontee Pant/The Christian Science Monitor
Fenway Farms

A vibrant vegetable garden is growing atop the roof of the oldest baseball park in the United States. When Fenway Park opened Fenway Farms this spring, the Boston Red Sox became the latest Major League Baseball team to feature more green than just a perfectly manicured field.

Patches of produce now sprout up across the nation at the stadiums of the San Francisco Giants, the Colorado Rockies, and the San Diego Padres. Fenway Farms, which officially kicked off on Red Sox opening day, is currently the largest major league garden with 5,000 square feet of growing space. 

Located atop the managing offices of the Red Sox, the all-organic garden was the idea of Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of Red Sox owner John Henry. The increasingly sophisticated palate of Americans, in part, prompted the interest in growing vegetables. Baseball concessions have gradually welcomed new fare, such as Shake Shack burgers in Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., and steak sandwiches at Yankee Stadium in New York. Ballpark staples like Cracker Jack and Fenway Franks have, over the years, been joined by fruit smoothies and sushi rolls. Now Red Sox Nation will be able to eat fresh vegetables grown on site.

Fenway Farms, using a milk crate container system, is set to produce 4,000 pounds of veggies and fruits annually. Chris Knight, Red Sox manager of facility planning and services, hopes that the farm’s “success here will show what is possible” and encourage Red Sox fans to sport their own green thumbs at home.

The vegetables will be used in food served at Fenway, including in the park’s private clubs. While the chefs have found it challenging to incorporate the available produce, “they look forward to [it],” says Mr. Knight. He adds that the farm is working on an educational-science program for Boston city youth scheduled to start in the fall.  

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to At Boston’s Fenway Park, a different Green Monster
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/2015/0630/At-Boston-s-Fenway-Park-a-different-Green-Monster
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe