Cover Story
The Magnolia Festival is one of the Birmingham area’s most anticipated Spring events, and coordinator Kathleen Phillips leads it with a passion for families and her community of Gardendale. “We fully put our faith into the event,” she said. “It takes a lot of work from so many people in the community, and a lot of prayer.”
Celebrating 25 Years. The Magnolia Festival, which this year is slated for April 17-18, 2026, celebrates its 25th year as a multifaceted, must-visit event. The festival’s mission is to “provide visitors with an economical, family-friendly experience while promoting local businesses, tourism, local arts and culture, and volunteerism in the greater Gardendale area.” Phillips said that vendors and activities this year lean into the festival’s anniversary and also the 250th anniversary of the United States. “This year is more of a reunion, and we’re going to do what we do best,” Phillips said. “We’re bringing back some favorites we’ve had over our last 25 years and celebrating the past.” Some of those features include a “Hometown Reunion” area with entertainment, a special quilting section called “The Airing of the Quilts,” artisan demonstrations, an always-popular car show.
The festival is divided up into activities on Friday and Saturday with a tribute concert to the band “Alabama” happening on Friday. On Saturday, a full slate of activities is available including food, vendors, pooch parade, midway carnival, petting zoo, pony rides, art classes, car show, kids zone, and musical performances on two different stages. The design of the festival, according to Phillips, is to create a family-friendly experience which has garnered the festival recognition as one of the best 25 festivals in the South and twice recognized as one of the top 10 in Birmingham. “We call ourselves a ‘total family experience,’ and we’ve kept it that way. We don’t have alcohol, and all of our entertainment on stage is clean,” Phillips said. “We have families that come every year, even generations that participate together. Sometimes it’s the only time they get together over the year.” The family-centric design extends to the involvement of the Phillips family from the festival’s very beginning.
The Phillips family attended the event when their children were young and considered it one of their favorite family activities. When Kathleen became the coordinator 21 years ago, it became even more central for husband Scott and children Grayson and Corinne. “My kids grew up walking to the festival, and then helping with the festival,” Phillips said. “And now our daughter Corinne brings her daughters from Daphne to ride the ponies and enjoy everything. It’s a really neat full-circle thing.” Kathleen first became involved with the Magnolia Festival during its first year when she and her husband Scott were Gardendale Chamber members who decided to volunteer to help. “We came on seven weeks before the festival was supposed to happen, and everyone was in survival mode. We helped that year, and it became part of our lives…We had no idea it would become this big,” she recalled, “and we didn’t know how much we would fall in love with it.”
The amount of work necessary to hold the festival each year is massive, and Phillips credits the work of multiple volunteers in different areas. It’s a full-time job for her from January through April, and workers include a vendor coordinator, volunteer coordinator, Pooch Parade coordinator, entertainment coordinator, and more. The City of Gardendale also volunteers employees from such departments as parks and rec, and two chambers of commerce help. She also points to the involvement of Gardendale churches as integral to the festival’s success, with different denominations working together in multiple ways. First Baptist Church works with the carnival, car show, and stage entertainment; the Church of Christ organizes the art show and classes for the kids, while the Methodist church has donated its parking lot for fireworks over the years. “Other churches have booths and spread the Gospel through them,” Phillips said. “They pour into the people and the community. It’s a full-time job for me, but it would be impossible without all the volunteers and work from so many people,” she said. “It’s just phenomenal.”
Family & Faith. The Phillips family is ingrained in the Gardendale community, although Kathleen first came to Alabama from Arkansas to work with Oxmoor House (the publisher of Southern Living and other publications) in 1989. She worked in the test kitchens there, then transitioned into creating her own website called Grits and Gouda (which features traditional Southern recipes made with shortcuts). She regularly publishes recipes in magazines including Birmingham Christian Family and provides demonstrations on local television stations. She also hosts an annual Holiday Cooking Show in November at the Gardendale Civic Center that benefits the Outdoor Ability Foundation established by the family. Daughter Corinne, (who is married and lives in Daphne with her husband and two daughters) and son Grayson (who lives in nearby Morris and works as a welder), were born in Ala., and they all remain extremely close. Husband Scott works as a mortgage lender and is an outdoorsman who started the Outdoor Ability Foundation with Grayson to refurbish and purchase adaptive equipment for young disabled outdoorsmen. 
The idea came from Grayson’s experiences in hunting and enjoying the outdoors when he was young. Grayson, who was born with spina bifida and is now 26, was an Eagle Scout and also often hunted, fished, and spent time outdoors with his father. They both realized how difficult it was for disabled youngsters to comfortably get into the woods. “When Scott took him turkey hunting as a kid, he came back researching ways to do it better,” Kathleen said. “We realized how hard it is for kids to navigate the outdoors in wheelchairs.” The foundation today provides grants to purchase adaptive equipment like crossbows, portable hunting blinds, fishing equipment, shooting sticks, and skiing equipment while also creating adaptive wheelchairs for families, individuals, and groups needing this equipment to host outdoor experiences for the disabled. The foundation has provided equipment in 14 different states and has helped countless families. “It’s been such a God thing, and His hand has been on all of it,” Phillips said. “Scott and Grayson really make things happen for kids. They go to shows and tell kids about what they offer. And they’ve made dreams come true for boys and girls.” Phillips said they hear heartwarming stories from families about a child finally being able to navigate mud puddles in the woods or getting to hunt and fish with a grandparent for the first time. The experience, she said, has been incredibly rewarding for all of them–and has reminded them of how God has directed their paths in so many ways.
Through the foundation, the creativity of cooking and the work of the Magnolia Festival, the Phillips family sees God’s direction and understands the importance of bringing a community together. “When you see families sitting in lawn chairs or on quilts we spread across the field, it reminds me of how special the festival is,” Phillips said. “It’s a way for all of us to come together.”
-Cheryl Wray
