Green Heart Blog

Celebrating a Year of Growth and Learning at the 16th Annual Harvest Dinner

There is a unique magic that fills the air on the third Thursday of May here at Green Heart. And this year was no different. On May 14th, we gathered at the Urban Farm at Enston Home for the 16th Annual Harvest Dinner, which marked a perfect culmination of another school year at Green Heart filled with hard work, curiosity, and shared growth.

And now as the Harvest Dinner and our farm to school year has come to a close, we find ourselves looking back with immense gratitude, joy, and inspiration. From the first seeds planted in the beginning of the fall season to the vibrant, overflowing garden beds of spring, it’s time for us to wrap up another incredible year growing food, minds, and community across Charleston schools. 

A Year of Impact in Partner Schools

We want to give a huge shout out to our partner schools, without whom Green Heart’s Farm to School program could not happen! Partner schools for the 2025-2026 school year include:

Burke High School

Charleston Catholic School

James Simons Montessori School

Meeting Street Academy

Meeting Street Elementary at Brentwood

Meeting Street Elementary at Burns

Memminger Elementary

Mitchell Elementary

Sanders Clyde Elementary

Sullivan’s Island Elementary

Our school programs are designed to connect students to fresh food and provide outdoor learning opportunities for students of all ages. This year was no different as our urban farms and school gardens were buzzing with activity, curiosity, and hands-on learning.

The 16th Annual Harvest Dinner

And then to wrap it all up, we celebrated with our Annual Harvest Dinner. This year, the event was hosted in tandem with the Charleston Housing Authority, at the Urban Farm at Enston Home. The weather couldn’t have been better and it turned into a spectacular celebration of community and food.

We were thrilled to welcome 500 neighbors, students, families,and supporters to the farm to celebrate. Together, we shared a delicious BBQ dinner headlined with meats from Peculiar Pig Eats and accompanied by garden-inspired sides and desserts provided by our friends at CCSD Nutrition Services. Guests also enjoyed live music by Ek and the Crew and family-friendly activities, like bubbles and inflatable axe throwing, that brought smiles to faces of all ages. 

Seeing the farm filled with laughter, conversation, and a shared appreciation for fresh food was a powerful reminder of what can happen when we bring people together around our mission.

Plus, an exciting addition was the fact that in partnership with Keep Charleston Beautiful, we diverted 99.2% of our waste from the landfill, making this event essentially zero waste!

Sharing Our Deepest Gratitude

We’d be remiss not to take a moment to also share our gratitude, as we know that an impactful year and a massive celebration like the Harvest Dinner do not happen in a vacuum. It takes a village to make this work possible.

We want to extend our deepest, most heartfelt thank you to our incredible Garden Educators, whose passion and creativity bring our curriculum to life every single day; to our school partner staff and administrators, who open their doors and integrate us into their school communities; to our students, whose curiosity, energy, and hard work inspire us constantly; and to our team of community volunteers, who get their hands dirty week after week to help cultivate learning opportunities and our garden spaces. You are the heartbeat of the Green Heart Project. Thank you for choosing to grow with us this year! 

We’d also like to give one more huge thanks to this year’s Harvest Dinner Sponsors:

Bear & Dawn Dyke

Blackbaud  •  Eventions by Joselyn

Motley Rice  •  Peculiar Pig Eats

Big Green  •  CCSD Nutrition Services

Limehouse Produce  •  Sysco

Don & Susan Harrison  •  Elliott Davis  •  Little Wing Apiary

Marshall Walker Real Estate  •  Michael Rabin & Loren Ziff

Pinnacle Financial Partners  •  Williams & Walsh, LLC

Berkeley’s  •  Blue Ion  •  Caroline Rion  •  Constantine Engineering  •  D’Allesandro’s Pizza • EventWorks  •  FIG  •  GrowFood Carolina  •  Good Clean Fun  •  Harvest Pure Distributors • Homegrown Hospitality • Johnny’s Garage  •  Little Diversified Architectural Engineering • Lucy Davis & Hank Young  •  Lucy Young  •  Marsh Hen Mill  •  Park & Grove  •  Taco Boy • The Royal American  •  The Ordinary  •  The Riley Center at the College of Charleston

And to our Harvest Dinner chefs and community partners… 

Chefs

Amber Jackson, MSE – Burns • CCSD Nutrition Services

Chef Cheryl, Serenity Events • Chef Gabby Smith, Grits and Gabs

Kaylora Black, Sanders-Clyde Elementary

Nate Hamric, James Simons Montessori •  Peculiar Pig Eats

Sarah Richardson, Sullivan’s Island Elementary

Vibrant Alkaline Vegan Eats

Community Partners

Charleston County Public Library  •  Earth Heart Growers • Grits & Gabs • Good Clean Fun • International African American MuseumKeep Charleston Beautiful  •  Mad Park Community  •  The Goatery

Thank you all from the bottom of our [green] hearts.

Looking Ahead

As we head into the summer months, the farm at Enston Home will keep producing, we’ll shift into our Youth Internship Program, where we’ll continue to provide garden-based learning opportunities to students, and we will begin prepping for another incredible school year ahead.

But before that, we’ll take one final moment to reflect: Thank you for an unforgettable school year, Charleston. Let’s keep the good thyme rolling! 

Photo Credit: A special thanks to photographer Paul Cheney for capturing so many special moments at this year’s event!