Beautiful Rainbow Garden

Program Type: 
Kitchen Classrooms, Garden Classrooms
Grade Level/Age Group: 
High School, Middle School
Number of Individuals Program Serves: 
100
Year Founded: 
2012
About the Program: 

Beautiful Rainbow Catering Company and Garden is a program of the Special Education Department of the Gadsden City Schools.  Located at Litchfield Middle School in Gadsden, Alabama, Beautiful Rainbow is a garden -to-table education program for teenagers and young adults with special needs.  The mission of the program is to teach significantly cognitively impaired and autistic individuals a variety of academic and functional/vocational skills through the vehicles of gardening and cooking.
Beautiful Rainbow maintains a chemical-free garden year-round growing vegetables such as arugula, heirloom carrots, cabbage, collard greens, kale, lettuces, beets, swiss chard, a variety of peppers, and heirloom tomatoes.  We maintain eighteen 60 square-foot raised beds at the school.  We use our harvest to cook and sale unique food items using our own original recipes.
At Beautiful Rainbow, we have high expectations for our students.  We prepare high-quality fresh food and baked goods using only the finest ingredients from our garden and other local farms and dairies.  It is our mission to teach the students to produce high-end food that is valued by our supporters.
Beautiful Rainbow has catered multiple large events in Gadsden, metropolitan Birmingham, and Mentone, Alabama.
Cooking and gardening have been shown to be therapeutic and vocationally valuable activities.  Our students learn to read and follow multiple-step recipes; measure ingredients; purchase ingredients; estimate and calculate food costs and profits; life-cycles of crops; measurement of temperatures for gardening and cooking; packaging food goods; following multiple-step directions; marketing products; completing a task from start to finish; teamwork; independent work; assembly-line work; safe and hygienic kitchen practices; keeping a garden journal; self-confidence; and joy! 
Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram.  You can find us on Facebook @ Beautiful Rainbow Catering Company and Garden.  You can find us on Instagram at beautiful_rainbo.