Lafayette Couple Wins Best Garden at Dirt Mag's Kitchen Garden Tour

It was pushing 93 degrees, but that didn’t stop the troop of over 100 people signed up for Dirt magazine’s 3rd annual Kitchen Garden Tour on Sunday July 24. Map in hand, each garden peeper planned a route to see their pick of 16 local veggie patches, then met up with the gardeners and the Dirt team at Mohawk House the Restaurant to celebrate and vote for their favorite gardens.
When all of the votes were tallied, Lafayette’s April and Rocco Perciballi had clinched Best Garden. The green-thumbed duo has gone pseudo-vegan these days, eating many meals straight from the garden and losing a combined 70 pounds in the process. “The Perciballi farm was truly spectacular,” said garden peeper Meg Fagan. Their bountiful and diverse lot is complete with apple trees, a grape arbor, and an herb garden.
Dirt’s third year event was by far its most well-attended yet. “What makes the tour so great are the passionate gardeners. They were knowledgeable, friendly, and willing to answer any question. We learned something at each of the 9 gardens we visited,” said garden hopper Karen Pritchard. “It inspired my husband and I so much that we completely re-landscaped our flower garden,” ticketholder Diane Ross wrote to Dirt magazine after the event.
Megan Jemison of Warwick, N.Y. won Best Rookie Garden. Most Hospitable went to the Spectors, of Chester. Pine Tree Elementary in Monroe and Newton, NJ’s Project Self Sufficiency tied for Best Community Garden. The Geeks Choice Award went to Karin Harrison of Florida, NY, whose garden was chosen by Dirt’s Garden Geeks, a unique trio of gardeners who reviewed this year’s veggie patches.
But at the end of the day, they were all winners. “This thing we do in solitude—growing our own food on a small scale—is more than some weird hobby for people who don’t like to do normal things like golf or play Pokemon Go,” said Dirt editor Becca Tucker. “Every bite of food backyard gardeners grow is a bite that did not have to be wrapped in plastic, shipped across the country or the world, that wasn’t slickly advertised or sprayed with Round-Up. Every person who gets to eat the food that comes out of a local garden is healthier for it, and more strongly connected to nature, to the gardener, and to the place we all live.”