The team of officers leading Wakefield’s Future Farmers of America club this school year participated in a garden competition at the North Carolina State Fair in October of 2016. Up against twenty plus other schools and groups, this award was an enormous win for the team. The club had participated in past years and decided to continue the tradition into this school year, lead by senior FFA President Bailey Parrish.

“We wanted to do something together as an officer team because we are working on collaborating,” Bailey Parrish said. “[The NC State Fair competition] was something we’ve done in previous years, but we brought it back just to see if it was something we were interested in. It actually turned out pretty well.”

FFA advisor, Jodi Riedel, guided the group of juniors and seniors; however, she gave the majority of the project to the officers to allow them to independently complete it.

“It was the first time that I really felt like the kids took over and did it,” Riedel said. “It was me just kind of being the conductor, and they were the ones putting all of the work into it.”

Kamado Grille, a local restaurant in Raleigh that features dishes entirely cooked on a grill and offers an outdoors-inside experience, generously paired with the club and provided a grill to feature in the garden. The sponsorship worked perfectly for their idea of achieving the theme of chef’s garden. Eric Gephart, chef at Kamado Grille, found the partnership beneficial for both ends.

“The Garden was an unbelievable representation of a Chef’s Garden,” Gephart said. “It was as if they had pulled it out of my brain. It has received a lot of attention on social media and remains the best Kamado style edible garden to date.”

In order to gain inspiration and ideas for the garden, the club members paid a visit to Kamado Grille. Senior Club Vice President, Allison Parrish, taste tested numerous dishes and experienced the atmosphere of the restaurant to help with the brainstorming process.

“It started with us going to Kamado Grille which is what we modeled [the garden] after, and it was just really cool seeing their entire design and aesthetic,” Allison Parrish said. “It was like a backyard inside. We even had some food from [Kamado Grille] and it was so good.”

The basis of their plan consisted of herbs and plants that one would typically find in a North Carolina dish. The plants included in the design were a mixture of vegetation grown by FFA and others from the local farmer’s market. The combination aided them in obtaining their desired effect from the garden.

“We really wanted a garden that was edible but also beautiful,” said Riedel. We had things that were typical of a North Carolina plate, so there were sweet potatoes, a lot of herbs- mint, thyme, oregano, basil- things that you know spice up the flavors, blueberries, figs, swiss chard, and beets.”

With planning starting at the end of September and a deadline of October 12, the officers were required to complete the project in a short period of time. They had a looming idea of what the judges were going to be looking for and had to ensure that they would execute that rubric. Judges looked for details such as overall effect, creativity, harmony, quality of plant material and overall design- all landscape design principles.

It wasn’t a completely smooth process for the team. Senior FFA President, Bailey Parrish, and junior FFA Secretary, Eliah Tekotte, found one the biggest difficulties of the project to be communicating with each other.

“I would say it was really hard to organize everyone-to make sure everyone did their own tasks,” Tekotte said. “We all went out and put in hours, especially for our president [Bailey Parrish]. It was a big task.”

Officers had mixed emotions when it came down to the final day. While having to take down a month’s work of numerous hours will be tough, they felt as if it was also a small blessing that it had been completed.

“It’s nice going to bed at night not having to worry about it and not looking through the text messages about the garden,” Tekotte said. But now we have to go tear it down which is going to be really sentimental.”

Despite the long days and soiled weekends, their hard work paid off and earned them second place. Along with the award, the officers also learned valuable lessons in communication and teamwork and came together to create a successful garden.

“I liked working with everyone,” Bailey Parrish said. “When we came together, things got done, things started to roll and watching the different elements coming together was really cool to see. Each person had their own part and then we brought bring it together. It was really cool to see the collaboration between everybody.”