28 | Perimeter Business
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Please eat our plants: An edible landscaping trend began in Buckhead
Enjoy free admission and special programs on the second Sunday of each month.
AUG 11 • SEPT 8 Designed for little kids, big kids, and the whole family, Second Sundays are for everyone. Visit us each month and experience new interactive, innovative family activities inspired by our collections and ever-changing exhibitions. Second Sundays are sponsored by the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation.
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1 Bedroom Condos now available For Sale or Lease
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PHOTOS BY JOHN RUCH
Top, Cory Mosser of Natural Born Tillers discusses the blueberry bushes planted along I-85 at the EpiCity Real Estate Services campus in Buckhead. Bottom, Morgan Carswell of EpiCity Real Estate Services, left, watches as Mosser offers fresh figs. Opposite page, a sunflower sprouts in the garden created by Natural Born Tillers at Adult Swim’s Midtown headquarters. (Special)
Continued from page 25 that “breaks people’s bubbles” between cars and the landscape, between the natural environment and the office environment. It’s a concept that already has some popularity in residential areas – including the recently opened Urban Food Forest in southeast Atlanta, where Natural Born Tillers is a contractor – but the commercial side is a new field. About three years ago, Mosser got the chance to try the concept through a chance introduction to EpiCity president Tom Stokes via a mutual friend who operates an organic farm at Emory University’s Oxford College in Oxford, Ga. Stokes and EpiCity’s architecture firm partner, Sizemore Group, agreed to help plant the seeds of the idea at the real estate company’s five-building complex on Plasters Avenue. Today, instead of generic evergreen shrubs under the office windows, EpiCity
has lavender plants and pineapple guava, which bears edible flowers. Trellises on an exterior wall will soon hold vines of muscadine grapes. On a closer look, landscape plants turn out to be the aromatic herb rosemary or the fruit-bearing serviceberry. Coming soon are “cocktail herbs” and tea plants for a new bar that will open in the complex. On a recent morning, Mosser strolled across the visitor parking lot, hopped onto the curb, stuck his hand into the foliage of a small tree, and produced some figs, which the Reporter can confirm were yummy. “When was the last time you stopped and looked at a plant?” Mosser said. “I think it changes your relationship to the landscape when you get something from it.” The edible landscaping was a hit. Now several EpiCity-managed properties have edible landscaping and garden beds, in-