Locally Grown Produce Could Reach New Heights
Jennifer Adams, who began serving as Okaloosa County’s tourist development department director last September, is thinking of starting a produce garden at the Emerald Coast Convention Center.
OKALOOSA ISLAND — Jennifer Adams is pondering a green “What if?” type of question.
Adams, who began serving as Okaloosa County’s tourist development department director last September, is thinking of starting a produce garden at the Emerald Coast Convention Center.
If this idea blooms into reality, organic food might be grown in either a rooftop garden or a traditional garden in the ground.
“We already get fresh, local seafood” for convention guests dining at the center, Adams said Thursday. “It would be great to get fresh, local produce as well.”
She said she has recently been talking about the possible garden with staff from Aramark, which handles food services at the 70,000-square-foot, 15-year-old convention center.
In early 2015, Philadelphia-based Aramark helped establish a 5,000-square-foot rooftop farm at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Green City Growers in Boston maintains Fenway Farms, which produces more than 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables each season to be used in on-site restaurants and concessions.
“At Fenway, the executive chef uses the food in his meals” for diners at the ballpark, said Adams, who is a Boston-area native. “Aramark brought this to our attention, and I thought, ‘Cool!’ Once the weather warms up, we’ll see if we can get a garden so our chef (at the convention center) can use organically grown produce.
“If our building is not conducive to that, we would do a garden outside somewhere.”
The local area obviously has a much longer growing season than Boston, Adams noted. She said the possible garden at the convention center could, depending on the season, feature produce such as potatoes, squash, corn, watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and eggplants.
In addition to working with Aramark on establishing the garden, she said the TDD could partner with the Okaloosa County Extension Office to provide gardening programs to the community.
“This is really preliminary,” Adams said. “We’re only in the idea stage.”
But she added that she expects the convention center’s new general manager to help the possible garden take shape. Former GM Bill Leaman retired last October. His replacement might be on board in February, Adams said.
“We’re going to be very visionary because we are the only convention center between Tallahassee and Pensacola,” she said. “But even if this (proposed garden) doesn’t work out, we have to start thinking beyond the ways we have been thinking for the past 15 years at the convention center. I’m charging my staff to come up with new ideas. Some of them may work, some might not. Why not do the ‘What ifs?’”
Jennifer Bearden, agriculture agent at the County Extension Office in Crestview, said she and other staff have been learning about the possible convention center garden from Extension Director Pam Allen.
“There are just so many ways to grow things these days,” said Bearden, who then noted a vertical garden she saw growing on the side of a building in Pittsburgh.
A raised garden bed, such as the ones that extension officials have set up at several local schools, or a soilless, hydroponic garden are among the options for growing produce on the convention center roof, she said.
“I’m excited to see this whole urban gardening thing take off” at the center, Bearden said. Rooftop gardening stems from “a little out-of-the-box thinking, but it’s a neat way to grow produce.”