The city rises over Paradigm Gardens with a skyline of office towers, the arc of the Superdome and the brickwork of the adjacent historic church, which seems to glow in the golden hour at sunset.

Within the garden itself, this urban farm-turned-event venue feels like a verdant glade in the middle of it all, hidden behind a perimeter that is no longer just a fence but a wall of flowering vines.

Close to downtown and hard by the overpass in Central City, the half-block-sized lot was once fallow, just part of a terrain of disinvestment. But as Paradigm Gardens, it’s grown into a uniquely adaptable space for music, food and gatherings in a landscape of low plantings and high waving fronds, chatty goats and colorful murals.

Behind it are culinary roots that keep growing, and an offbeat ent

See Full Page