The New York Botanical Garden, the largest botanical garden in any U.S. city, is bringing its plants from the garden to the dinner table this fall.

Its exhibit, the “Edible Garden,” which is on display until Oct. 17 and includes several sites littered throughout the Garden’s 250-acre campus, shows visitors how growing and cooking their own food can contribute to an overall healthy lifestyle.

Jennifer Rosnan, the Garden’s vice president of children’s and public education, said that the exhibit was a natural progression for the Garden. “The Botanical Garden has a very long history of growing edible plants,” she said. “Since it’s becoming more important to know where food comes from and how to prepare healthy meals, the exhibit seemed appropriate.” 

One of the exhibit’s featured sites, the Family Garden, uses hands-on activities and colorful displays to engage children.  “We want to give families a stronger connection to food,” said Toby Adams, the Family Garden’s manager. “So we give them opportunities to care for it and taste it.”

Amongst its many flower beds, the site features plants from, and used to make foods, in different countries: a wheat-crust pizza with oregano and tomato middle; a breakfast bowl, containing barley, wheat, rice and other plants.

The Garden hosts arts and crafts and food experiment programs for kids every afternoon and provides space where children can grow their own crops.

After they made arts and crafts and pickled their own cucumbers, the Eiler family pulled up carrots that they had planted earlier in the summer. “The kids came [to the Family Garden] for the first time in June and they just harvested their craft,” said mom Sally Eiler. “I think it’s a very special thing.”

The Conservatory Container Garden, which is on display in front of the Haupt Conservatory, uses potted plants and flowers to illustrate to city-dwellers that gardening without a yard can still be fruitful.

Next to the conservatory, Martha Stewart’s Herb Garden is flowered with tips from famous chefs — such as TV personality Sara Moulton, Kefi chef/owner Michale Psilakis — and food bloggers on how to use both ordinary and unusual herbs.

“I think people are seeing stuff they’ve heard about, but they didn’t know how it grows,” said Mike Wronski, a Garden aide. “Here, they get a chance to see how stuff grows.”

Wronski hopes the Garden will inspire visitors just as it has inspired him. “I saw it was easy to do here, so I tried it, and it’s been rewarding,” he said, adding, “now I have dozens of cucumbers.”

The exhibit also features a Conservatory Kitchen, where chefs cook homegrown plants in front of visitors.

Kristine Nicholson, a healthy eating specialist at Whole Foods, was one of the recent presenters for the Garden’s Whole Foods Market Friday program.

As she prepared gazpacho and summer salad with peach-walnut dressing for a crowd of 30-40 attendees, Nicholson explained that eating healthy foods throughout life prevents sickness and disability from arising later on. “It’s a lot more economically sound to nourish our bodies now rather than paying medical bills later,” she said.

If the Edible Garden does not already beckon visitors to return to “real food,” its extensive finale programming through mid-October should do the trick.

Although Rosnan lists the upcoming “Fiesta de Flores,” “Family Harvest Weekend,” and “Finale Weekend” —  with master chef Mario Batali — as “a fun end to the exhibition,” she says the Garden’s connection to edible plants is far from over.

“For the last 100 years we’ve been teaching people about growing food,” she said. “I think we’ll always do more of an edible garden type of exhibit since it is certainly a topic that doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.”