Lookout Mountain Conservancy owns and manages an organic garden as part of its high school youth and leadership program. Students discuss with their families what vegetables they would like to eat, plant and care for over the summer in an individual garden plot; and then harvest and prepare the vegetables for both their family and the other interns using an on-site kitchen.

Interns are paid as part of the Conservancy’s leadership program. For many of the students, this is the first time they have gardened or eaten these vegetables.

A number of youth have reconnected with their grandparents over the growing and preparing of vegetables they had eaten in their youth.