This is a cool thing. It is a crazy, extremely, mind blowingly San Francisco thing, but it is a cool thing.

As of June 2014, AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, has a garden. A vegetable garden. Or, to be more accurate, a fruit, herb, and vegetable garden. Kumquats and lemons and strawberries and kale and collards and lemon verbena - oh my!

For anyone who's not a baseball fan, you may not know that there is a spot behind center field that must be empty.

No seats. No bleachers. No hot dog vendors. It's the area directly in front - way in front - of the batter when they are up at bat. Major League Baseball decrees that the batter's sight line must be a clear green scene. Most ballparks thus use that space as a sod farm or put in a few trees or they set up bullpens behind a green wall.

And so it was at AT&T Park until the Giants and Bon Appetit Management Company, which oversees the food venues at the park, colluded to create a garden.

While the idea of growing enough produce to supply the vendors at the park may be a pipe dream (the garlic for all those garlic fries alone would be a monumental undertaking), the garden is set, instead, to function as a social and educational space. Healthy eating is part of improving fitness levels, a cause the Giants rally around, particularly for kids. The garden, with its signs pointing out the artichoke thistle and the sage bush, is a space where kids of all ages can see how food plants grow.

Most of the plants in the garden are set in tall concrete-walled beds, putting the garden at children's eye- and hand-level.

A few of the beds are home to hydroponic towers, each capable of growing up to 40 plants each on an insanely small footprint. They're a popular option for rooftop, restaurant, and other urban gardens with limited space and have the bonus of using less water than other growing systems since the water not taken up by the plants gets recycling through the tower.

Yet it's the groups of stylish Adirondack chairs, picnic tables, and tempting fresh food stands ringing the garden that I predict are going to draw in the crowds. People are welcome to bring their own food, tote in vittles from other vendors, or tuck into the garden-inspired pizzas, sandwiches, fresh juices, and mason jar salads being served up right there.

Surely there's a downside to this whole venture, right? While some hard-core baseball fans may say that jars of salad have no place at the ballpark, alas the actual bummer is more serious: because of batter sight-line issues, those green walls are still there. The only way to watch the game live while in the garden is through one of two small portholes; a huge-screen TV will be broadcasting the game as well.

Yet those mason jar salads, I will note, are absolutely perfect for carrying back to your seat.