The Gramercy Park Hotel is one of the chicest tickets in town, from Danny Meyer’s Maialino restaurant on the ground floor to the celebrity-XX Rose Bar on the top. But not many people know that it has a rooftop garden where they’ve been growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs for the hotel for more than two years.

Esquire reported on the garden when it was first installed by the Rose Bar Manager, Kevin Denton, in summer of 2010. More recently The Feast posted a video about the garden’s features, many of which are innovative solutions that Denton and his team came up with on the fly. These include “a rain-water irrigation system built from retired oil drums, a compost topped with a discarded duck roaster, and [...] tomato plant pulleys.”

To follow the project and connect with people who worked on it, visit the Honest Buildings project page.

Photo via Esquire.