It’s time once again for Tuscaloosa's annual Garden Party.
The food fest is this Sunday evening at the Tuscaloosa River Market. Ten area farmers will be pairing with chefs from ten local restaurants to create a menu of dishes that won’t be available anywhere else.
The event benefits the Druid City Garden Project, a nonprofit educational organization in Tuscaloosa. Lindsay Turner is the Executive Director of the project.
Alex AuBuchon: Lindsay, your group puts gardens in local elementary schools—what benefits do the students get from the gardens?
Lindsay Turner: We often find that the produce that our kids try out of their garden – they are, first of all, much more willing to try and eat because they are the ones themselves who have planted the seed and have raised that plant all the way to harvest and, because it just tastes so much darn better than the grocery store, so our kids love the taste of the food that they are growing at their schools. And we see in our evaluation results that our school gardens are changing kids eating behaviors.
We’re focusing on big issues that are hitting our kids right now – childhood obesity, type two diabetes, hypertension – all of these horrible lifelong health negative health effects that can occur in our children, and that, unfortunately, Alabama is worst in the nation for. And what we’re finding is with something as simple as a school garden, we can change those eating behaviors and get kids excited about their veggies -- just as excited as they are about candy. And we can do all of that by making learning fun, engaging and increasing standardized test scores.
AA: As a nonprofit, I know the Garden Project really depends on community support, and one of your biggest avenues for that support is this weekend. Tell us about the Garden Party.
LT: We cannot do our work without a huge number of supporters, in our community, and the Garden Party is a big way that we raise those funds to be able to do this work. We like to think of the garden party as another extension of our mission to build community through food. So we take 10 of our wonderful local farmers, pair them up with some of our most talented chefs in Tuscaloosa and throw a big food festival.
This Sunday it’s at the River Market from 5 to 8 p.m. Guests will be able to come and sample dishes, oftentimes, that aren’t on these restaurants’ menus, so it’s one-of-a-kind, exclusive dishes. We’ve got some real delicious-sounding ones coming up this Sunday including things like a sweet potato canapé with spiced herb goat cheese finished two ways with either black lava salt or balsamic reduction -- that’s from Chuck’s. We’ve got Local Roots bringing their food truck and doing a Snow’s Bend sweet potato gnocchi with arugula brown butter lemon and parmesan, Hotel Indigo doing crab-stuffed jalapenos with cheese and bacon, and a whole lot more that just sound mouthwatering.
So folks are going to be able to sample that fresh local fare in addition to all three local Tuscaloosa breweries who are going to have their fare there too. It’s a kid-friendly event. You can bring your kids. They’ll have activities there to do. It’s a really fun opportunity to be able to celebrate our local food system while supporting an organization that does really great work with our kids.
AA: What are some of the ways that the money raised at the Garden Party will be used by the Garden Project?
LT: Our dream is that one day there will be a teaching garden in every school in Alabama, and we are working hard to reach that dream. This year is a big year for us. We have 10 farmers, 10 restaurants and they’re supporting 10 schools. We brought on our 10th school this fall, so this garden party is… Really, the effects are immediately going back into our community, so folks that come should feel really great about that.
AA: You mentioned earlier about the Garden Party being a way to grow community through food – talk a little more about that.
LT: So we have found, and I’m sure listeners have seen, too, a big movement and trend across the country to bring community to our food system. There’s an increasing demand to know who your farmers are, know where your food is coming from, and we think that the Garden Party is just a wonderful way to celebrate that community. You will know each of the farmers who have prepared these dishes, and if your listeners are patrons of the Tuscaloosa River Market on Saturday mornings, they will actually know the farmers themselves. It’s a wonderful community-building space.
It is a fantastic event, and it’s popular. We sell out every year. So I encourage folks who are interested in coming to go ahead to druidcitygardenproject.org and purchase tickets because we expect it to sell out again this year.
AA: Lindsay, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
LT: I appreciate you having me.
Lindsay Turner is the Executive Director of the Druid City Garden Project. Their annual Garden Party fundraiser is this Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Tuscaloosa River Market. Tickets are available online at DruidCityGardenProject.org.