Paradigm Gardens
If you have not heard of Paradigm Gardens, I’m so happy you are reading this! Paradigm is a magical little gem that everyone in NOLA should know about! I first visited last year with one of our founders, Melissa. She’s been patronizing the Paradigm pop ups events and enlisting their garden services for years now. She take hers her kids to hear live music there, frequents the plant sales and asks the founder all kinds of detailed gardening questions. Paradigm is not only a functioning garden that provides food to local restaurants, but is also a nationally recognized event space and now offers a small school. PS- don’t miss their upcoming concert series featuring grammy nominated Etana and Roots of Music and of course the goat yoga!
To find out more about all of this, we asked the founder, Joel to tell us a little about everything.
Epiphany: Can you tell us about your event space?
PD: The outdoor gardens are beautiful, unique and intimate. They are prefect for anything from small plated dinners of 30, to larger receptions of 125. The chef can customize a menu featuring primarily seasonal ingredients and uses our own wood-fired oven and grill.
Epiphany: We know Paradigm Gardens has a unique partnership with restaurants in New Orleans. Can you tell us more about that?
PD: Our relationship with the restaurants has morphed over the years, especially since Covid. Currently we work with Patois, Coquette, Ancora, Daily Beet, Turkey & The Wolf and Hansen's Snobliz.
Epiphany: Can you tell us more about the plants you sell at the plant sale and how they are different than the plants you can buy at most gardening stores? We hear you have more than one garden. What goes on in the mysterious second garden?
PD: We grow scores of varieties of veggies, herbs, flowers and fruits. We grow some run of the mill varieties but mostly rare and heirloom varieties that you can't find in other garden stores. We also make sure that we only sell plants that are proper for the season in order to set our customers up for success. Unlike most garden centers, our plants are always healthy and not root bound. Additionally, instead of inert potting soil, our plants are sold in a mix of our own compost, providing proper nutrients to ensure our customers' plants grow healthy and happy.
The mythical second garden is off Tchoupotoulas by the Walmart. It is where we host school on Mondays and Tuesdays. At that garden we have an orchard of various citrus, persimmons, misbelieves, avocado, figs and mulberries plus the greenhouse.
Epiphany: We would love to know more about the Paradigm Gardens School. What is your school mission and why did you start the school?
PD: The primary stressor after Covid hit, for all of my friends who have kids, was what to do with their kids. Zoom school was not a good option and in person wasn't safe. So we started having meetings and discussions about home-schooling and possibly starting a school. The mission of Paradigm School is to provide a free, co-op model montessori-style school where the parents and students "pay" with their participation in the school and the curriculum is hands-on, open-ended and centered around the garden.
Epiphany: Besides chickens and goats, do you have any other animals that live at Paradigm? Is it true that Oatmeal the goat was in a music video? Tell us more.
PD: Yes, we have 70 chickens, 30 pigeons, 10 guinea hens, 6 beehives, and haha, yes Oatmeal was the STAR of a Lil Wayne & Jay Jones music video.