When Natasha Mahmoud saw the cabbage, carrots, collard greens, lettuce and rutabagas growing in the Spring Hill community garden, she was quick to describe the scene: “It looks like a jungle!”

Natasha, her siblings and other youngsters were accompanied by Voloria Manning, minister of music at the Temple of God Church of DeLand, as they visited the garden on Sunday, Jan. 14, in the Spring Hill community of DeLand, just a mile from the Stetson campus.

Afterward, they were joined by more than 80 other guests at Stetson’s Soul Supper, a dining event made from the garden’s fresh produce and designed to raise money for garden maintenance.

Seated outdoors in a field between the garden and the Delta Sigma Theta House at 501. S. Delaware St., the diners feasted on a multi-course meal prepared by Hari Pulapaka, an acclaimed chef and an associate professor of Mathematics at Stetson.

In 2016, a Stetson study revealed that residents of Spring Hill were concerned about the lack of fresh produce available there. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had identified the impoverished community as a “food desert” – one lacking readily-available fresh and healthy food.

Spearheaded by Stetson’s Center for Community Engagement, the garden was built on city of DeLand property with the volunteer help of some 50 Stetson students on Values Day on Sept. 26, 2017. Thirty-nine raised beds, each 5-by-15-foot, were created. Most were leased for $20 a year to local individuals and groups, such as the Temple of God Church. Some plots were designated and marked “U-pick,” with produce grown there available for anybody to harvest.

Local residents planted seedlings in late October, again with the aid of Stetson student volunteers. Two and a half months later, the garden plots are flourishing, with only one remaining unused.

Maxwell Droznin, Stetson’s Community Engagement Coordinator and a key player in orchestrating the numerous organizations involved in launching the garden, told diners that money raised by the $25 tickets will benefit the Spring Hill Gardeners Association.

That community organization “will be managing the garden and everything that goes with it: the marketing, the outreach, the volunteer coordination, the finances,” Droznin said on Sunday. “You all are helping us ensure that the garden is going to be a sustainable piece of this community, and that it will be out here and available for everybody.”

Hari Pulapaka, Ph.D., and his wife, Jenneffer Pulapaka, a DeLand podiatric surgeon, own and operate Cress Restaurant in downtown DeLand. Hari Pulapaka is a four-time semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards for Best Chef-South.

For Soul Supper, Pulapaka used leftover produce from the garden’s U-pick lots – including kohlrabi, cabbage, collard greens and mustard greens – to create a soup, salad and a rice dish. He also prepared jerk chicken, buttermilk biscuits and mango bread pudding for the meal. Some of the food was prepared shortly before the event and some on-site.

Pulapaka and Cameron Gaab, a sous chef at Cress, dished food from huge pots sitting on portable warmers on a table in the field beside the garden. The food was then served by a half-dozen Stetson student volunteers to guests seated at a dozen tables in the field.

The idea of the Soul Supper arose when Droznin and Pulapaka were pondering what to do with the produce that had not been harvested from the U-pick lots, Droznin said, “and it “kind of ballooned from there.”

Cress Restaurant has “a history of supporting local farmers, and now this garden is literally, physically, in my backyard,” Pulapaka said. “My wife (who also attended the supper) and I live not far from here. It’s our community. When this opportunity came up to support this project financially as well as other ways, we jumped at it. This is a project where folks are invested in the health of this community and also the health of people in general. Clearly the garden is off to a great start.”

Manning, the minister of music at Temple of God, said produce from the church’s plot “will go to the members of the church and any other members of the community who are in need of this food.”

The children she brought to Soul Supper are part of the temple’s learning center, she said, adding, “We have a big summer camp with them. So, we’ll come here during the summer and keep taking care of the garden.”

Droznin said the community garden is “a large partnership” between Stetson’s Center for Community Engagement, the Greater Union Life Center (a DeLand nonprofit community service organization), the city of DeLand, the USDA, the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension, Volusia County Master Gardeners and the Florida Department of Health.

— Rick de Yampert