The city rises over Paradigm Gardens with a skyline of office towers, the arc of the Superdome and the brickwork of the adjacent historic church, which seems to glow in the golden hour at sunset.
Close to downtown New Orleans, in Central City, Paradigm Gardens is an event venue built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Within the garden itself, this urban farm-turned-event venue feels like a verdant glade in the middle of it all, hidden behind a perimeter that is no longer just a fence but a wall of flowering vines.
Close to downtown and hard by the overpass in Central City, the half-block-sized lot was once fallow, just part of a terrain of disinvestment. But as Paradigm Gardens, it’s grown into a uniquely adaptable space for music, food and gatherings in a landscape of low plantings and high waving fronds, chatty goats and colorful murals.
Paradigm Gardens is an event venue in New Orleans built in an urban garden. (Photo by Joel Hitchcock-Tilton)
Behind it are culinary roots that keep growing, and an offbeat entrepreneur who keeps tilling his various pursuits and passions into the garden.
“It really started as a chef’s garden, supplying our partner restaurants,” said Joel Hitchcock-Tilton, the gardener, event producer, DJ, educator and connector for a network of chefs, musicians and artisan makers through Paradigm Gardens.
“Today, we still work closely with our chefs,” he said. “But it’s really grown into something else, it’s this event venue and community space.”
Close to downtown New Orleans, in Central City, Paradigm Gardens is an event venue built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
This year marks a decade since the founding of Paradigm Gardens. In that time, it’s evolved from a garden that hosts events to a custom-built event space within a garden. In addition to concerts, craft markets and food events, it hosts weddings, corporate outings and goat yoga sessions (the main occupation for the in-house herd).
A herd of chatty goats is at home in Paradigm Gardens, a New Orleans event venue built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Where it was once a patchwork of garden beds, there are now paved walks between plantings, an indoor prep kitchen and a kettle pond. String lights between the trellises have replaced tiki torches, and full-fledged restrooms have replaced the glorified outhouses of before.
In the weeks ahead, a slate of events shows a spectrum of its potential (see details below).
The wood-fired oven is a centerpiece for chef-led food events and concert series at Paradigm Gardens, a New Orleans event venue built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Still central, though, is the wood-burning oven and outdoor kitchen that first brought visitors through the garden.
During food events and concerts a cross section of New Orleans restaurant people cook together, representing upscale restaurants or anytime joints putting different global traditions side by side on the table. These aren’t the individual tasting stations common to events, but more like chef-led cook-outs as guests fill their plates from the assembled spread.
Just-picked vegetables and dips start a meal at Paradigm Gardens, a Central City urban farm that hosts two fall event series.
Advocate staff photo by Ian McNulty
For private events, Paradigm Gardens now has its own in-house chef, Pat White of Karibu Kitchen catering, a master of wood-fire cooking.
Two gardens, many partners
With the Central City garden now more tailored to events, most of the restaurant-bound produce Hitchcock-Tilton grows comes from a smaller plot he developed next to his house about two miles away, just off Freret Street’s restaurant row.
Joel Hitchcock-Tilton tends a bed of herbs and vegetables bound for New Orleans restaurants at his garden off Freret Street, an outcropping of his Paradigm Gardens event venue and garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Walking around the garden beds here, Hitchcock-Tilton constantly tears off leaves or plucks produce, offering samples and often giving their résumés.
Joel Hitchcock-Tilton tends a bed of herbs and vegetables bound for New Orleans restaurants at his garden off Freret Street, an outcropping of his Paradigm Gardens event venue and garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
That lightly citrusy lemon cucumber was planted for Sophina Uong, chef at Mister Mao, and the tamarillo, a pea-sized fruit with a tart pop, is bound for her eclectic Uptown Asian restaurant too.
The sugarcane stretching up by the corner has chef Nina Compton’s name on it. The gardener will soon shuttle some over to her upscale Caribbean restaurant Compére Lapin, likely on his bicycle if the weather cooperates.
Peeling a hibiscus sorrel bud from one of the many plants growing at Paradigm Gardens, an event venue in New Orleans built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
This garden gives partner restaurants a supply chain that can be measured in city blocks, and it gives the chefs and their staff a chance to visit, join the harvest and get a dirt-on-the-hands connection to what they’re serving.
“If we’re cutting that morning, it could be on their menu that day,” Hitchcock-Tilton said.
Vines and blooms make a green wall around Paradigm Gardens, a New Orleans event venue built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
In addition to Compére Lapin and Mister Mao, the garden’s partner restaurants include the contemporary bistro Coquette and its casual chicken spot Here Today Rotisserie, and the two Daily Beet healthy eats cafes. The garden supplies others too as specialty produce comes into season.
Joel Hitchcock-Tilton walks the grounds as he waters plants at Paradigm Gardens, the New Orleans event venue he built in an urban garden. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Alongside fancy baby and heirloom vegetable varieties, these beds are growing tropical staples for world cuisines getting more attention in the restaurant scene, especially Caribbean.
That aligns with the gardener’s role in the reggae music realm. He produces reggae festivals here and in other cities, including NOLA Reggae Fest returning Oct. 24-26 at Congo Square,
Roots, expanding
A green roof covered in vines is part of Paradigm Gardens, an event venue in New Orleans built in an urban garden. (Photo by Joel Hitchcock-Tilton)
Paradigm Gardens started when Hitchcock-Tilton and his friend and then-business partner Jimmy Seely took on the original Central City property in 2015. The city was seeing a post-Katrina flourishing of urban farms and community gardens at the time. But Paradigm Gardens was drawn up differently, with specific restaurants as partners and events built into the business plan.
File photo from 2016: Jimmy Seely harvests vegetables at Paradigm Gardens, an urban farm in Central City. (Photo by Sophia Germer / The Times-Picayune)
Photo by Sophia Germer / The Times-Picayune
“This could not rely on grants or volunteers, it had to be financially sustainable as well as ecologically sustainable,” Hitchcock-Tilton said.
Since Seely left the venture, Hitchcock-Tilton runs the property with a team of staff, and many of his interests beyond the garden have intersected here. A teacher and youth sports coach, he started a Montessori-style school on the grounds during the pandemic. His work in events and concerts opens a pipeline of musical talent for happenings in the garden, and sometimes beyond.
A green roof covered in vines is part of Paradigm Gardens, an event venue in New Orleans built in an urban garden. (Photo by Joel Hitchcock-Tilton)
In August, he co-hosted Savor the City, a tasting event and concert at the Broadside to support a dozen local restaurants during the summer business slump. It was the test-run of a concept he hopes to make an annual event and expand to help more local restaurants through the seasonal downturn.
Still, it’s the Central City garden where all these threads come together.
“It’s always felt magical because of the chefs and music in this forgotten spot that’s really in the middle of the city,” Hitchcock-Tilton said. “Now I feel we’ve really connected the dots with the venue.”
Paradigm Gardens, 1131 N. Rampart St.
For event details and tickets see paradigmgardensnola.com.
Oct. 21: Decade in Bloom concert series, with food from Coquette, Porgy’s Seafood Market, Patois and Nikkei; music from Grammy award-winning vocalist Gramps Morgan; all food, drink included, tickets $100.
Oct. 26: Goat yoga, admission $40 (small class sizes).
Oct. 28: Taste of the Caribbean, with food from Queen Trini Lisa, Jamaican Johnny, Fritai, and 14 Parishes; music from Inna Vision; all food, drink included, tickets $70.
Nov. 16: Brunch craft market and plant sale, free with RSVP; food, drink available for purchase.
Nov. 18: Decade in Bloom concert series, with food from Baru, the Kingsway, Mister Mao, Here Today Rotisserie and Brasa; music from Cactus Thief; all food and drink included, tickets $100.
Dec. 7: Holiday market brunch and plant sale, free with RSVP; food, drink available for purchase.
Holiday concert nights: Dec. 8 with Robin Barnes, Dec. 9 with Nayo Jones; tickets $28, food, drink available for purchase.
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