Buy Your Alpharetta Community Garden Cookbook Today

Put down your laundry, your video games and your smartphone and rush over to the Alpharetta Community Garden this morning to get a copy of the Alpharetta Community Garden Cookbook. Part fund-raiser but mostly great personal recipes, it's available from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the garden off Wills Road in Wills Park.

"The gardeners were asked to contribute favorite recipes that contain at least one ingredient that can be garden grown," said Kate Tunison, the coordinator for the cookbook project.

That makes the majority of the recipes fresh oriented, she said. Most, if not all, are likely to have been tried by the gardeners using produce they personally grew in the Alpharetta Community Garden.

"We wanted it to represent the essence of the garden, things they could be growing there and things they enjoy cooking with," Tunison said.

Some of the gardeners who submitted the 121 recipes used in the cookbook are bound to be at the garden. Ask them to autograph your cookbook. But bring your own pen; they are there on a regular workday for the Alpharetta Community Garden. It will be the first time for most of them in seeing the cookbook themselves, as Tunison said that's when all the gardeners are coming to pick up their own copies.

The cookbook has 10 color pages inside with photos of the garden, all taken by gardeners who had not idea at the time that these images would ever appear in a cookbook. Another nine black and white photos are in the cookbook also.

How to Buy an Alpharetta Community Garden Cookbook

In addition to stopping by the garden today, Dec. 8 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., there are other ways to get your copy of the cookbook.

• The owner of Twigs and Lace, a local home decor and gift shop, has agreed to sell the cookbook at cost to help the Alpharetta Community Garden, with all proceeds going to the garden.
• You can arrange to have the cookbook mailed to you, but you'll have to pay for shipping on top of the $15. Email the Alpharetta Community Garden's director for information about getting copies by mail.

"So that's why we are encouraging people to come to the garden this Saturday between 10 and 2 to get some for themselves and as holiday gifts," Tunison said.

The Alpharetta Community Garden opened in 2009.

"Comcast Cares folks were instrumental in helping us get it off the ground," she said.

How Have the Gardeners Helped the Community?

Within the last two years, the garden has sent 700 pounds of produce to North Fulton Community Charities. They've also built garden beds at the Ed Isakson-Alpharetta Family YMCA.

"We participated in projects with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts locally," Tunison said. "We also have donated a bed or two ... to local high schools if they wanted to do growing experiments. We work with the community quite a bit."

The cookbook sales are for a fundraiser in which 100 percent of the proceeds go back to the garden so the gardeners can continue with projects such as the donation beds with produce grown specifically to go to North Fulton Community Charities.

Tunison said the gardeners feel that they are part of the community and want to give back to the community.