Teen Center to host garden party

Teens are invited to a free garden party, featuring food and acoustic music, from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, June 25 at the Old Fire House Teen Center, 16510 NE 79th St.

The event will be “a fancy ‘Alice in Wonderland’-inspired party with sun tea, lemonade, petit fours, cucumber sandwiches, tarts — all the fun of a traditional garden party but with treats researched, prepared and baked by teens,” said Rana Shmait, program assistant at The Old Fire House.

“We’ll also play bocce ball, badminton and croquet. Garden Party is also an opportunity for teens to learn about the Old Fire House’s organic gardens and what’s been planted and how to tend to both the vegetable and flower gardens.”

This is the third year that teens are planting produce at the Old Fire House. A Redmond High School student named Jake Whitten built garden beds as part of his Eagle Scout project this past winter. Crops were planted in April and teens are taking care of them with supervision from staff member Paul Shin, who oversees the teen center’s nutrition programs.

These include “a popular, weekly raw fruit tasting and food history lesson,” said Shmait.

The teens planted tomatoes, parsley, basil, a variety of herbs, flax flowers, sunflowers, peas, pumpkins, squash and eggplant.

Shmait said the teens were eager to get involved, “especially with the Obamas’ White House garden receiving so much positive attention.”

Shin noted that food served at the June 25 garden party won’t be from the Old Fire House garden “because the plants are either within their gestation period or seeding period.” But “the teens are excited and intrigued by the different growth periods of the plants in the garden,” he said.

For more information about the free garden party at The Old Fire House, call (425) 556-2370.

Contact Redmond Reporter Reporter Mary Stevens Decker at mdecker@redmond-reporter.com or (425) 867-0353, ext. 5052.

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