Thank You For a Great Garden Gala

All of us here at Green Plate Special would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to everyone who came out last Friday evening for our fourth annual Garden Gala! This year marked our biggest turnout and support yet. We couldn’t have done it without our 22 wonderful volunteers and 12 youth ambassadors and their families. Our youth ambassadors were in charge of passing hors d’oeuvres and dessert, helping with the veggie pull, selling golden tickets, and leading guests on behind-the-scenes tours of the garden. A special thank you to all of our wonderful business supporters who were so generous in their donations for the veggie pull and other items on the menu. With such a wonderful harvest this season, all of the dishes served, from salad to pizza and paella, featured fresh produce from the garden, and we had a rockin’ band, Alex Rasmussen & The Road, to top it all off!

Many of the youth ambassadors at the Gala also participated in our 2016 summer camps, our biggest year of summer camps thus far with a total of 6 1-week camps! Each day of camp included time in the garden, planting and harvesting, as well as in the kitchen, cooking up delicious lunches that we shared as a community. Campers also loved participating in team-building activities and art projects, such as creating mosaic stepping stones and murals for the garden.

Further, this is our 4^th year to hire summer youth interns. This is job training and work experience for them, harvesting and weighing produce for our market stand and CSA box, creating individual and team goals for the summer and even writing their own Bios. This year we hired 4 interns and 1 senior intern, who worked with us last summer as well. Each of them spoke as well at the Garden Gala.

Now as we head into the fall, we are excited to gear up for programming with Madrona K-8, Washington Middle School, and many other new and returning partners as well!