A Garden in Every Neighborhood!

DUG's documentary highlighting the positive impact that community gardens have on neighborhoods and public health is now available for online viewing! 

A Garden in Every Neighborhood from Denver Urban Gardens on Vimeo.

In A Garden in Every Neighborhood, community gardeners share their stories about how gardening has affected their health and happiness. Click here to learn more about our research with the Colorado School of Public Health. 

Have questions? Contact us!

Let's Move--and Garden!

Posted by Emily Frost, Programs and Communications Intern.

This past weekend, the National League of Cities hosted the “Congress of Cities” at the Denver Convention Center. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke at the event, presenting praise and a challenge to the city officials in attendance as he represented the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity.

Among other things, Vilsack noted the importance of community gardens in creating healthy communitiesThese girls get moving as they bicycle around the Fairview Harvest Festival. Community gardens are great spaces for both nutrition and exercise. and setting a foundation for success of the campaign. He encouraged officials in attendance to practice coalition building and map out food deserts in their cities, but also to take note of where community gardens were having successes.

According to the article in Food Safety News, Vilsack also announced that

USDA offices around the county are now providing ground for 700 gardens that this growing season produced 90,000 pounds of fresh produce. Most went to local food banks.

Here in Denver, DUG’s extensive community of gardeners donate a hefty portion of produce each year to our area food banks, including non-profits like Project Angel Heart, which exists to ensure that the metro area’s very ill receive free, consistent and appropriately nutritious meals. 

Another hot topic during the USDA Secretary’s speech was the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that recently passed in Congress. This act, coupled with cities committing to make nutritional food available throughout the school districts, has the potential to really make an impact on what Vilsack sees as a matter of national security. 

A Healthier Meal is a Happier Meal

Posted by Emily Frost, Communications & Programs Intern.

The Golden Arches. Perhaps even more so than our flag, Lady Liberty, or the amorphous “Land of Opportunity”, these arches are the iconic representation of America.

If you’re anything like me, you delighted in trips to McDonald's as a child largely because of the promise of the Happy Meal, featuring the toy inside that magical box of joy. I collected, coveted, and loved those cheap pieces of plastic. They were a part of my childhood culture. They may soon be a thing of the past—not just my own, but America’s.

The hottest food news sweeping the nation from our western shores has people in a tizzy about the state of the Happy Meal after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that effectively kills the McDonald’s Happy Meal.

Joe Eskenazi of the San Francisco Weekly perhaps puts it best when he wrote: 

It seems the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has accomplished what the Hamburglar never could. They've made off with McDonald's fare.

But is the death of the Happy Meal really something to be mourned?

One of the board members who voted to increase demands for meals that include toys shares his reasoning in the Los Angeles Times:

"We're part of a movement that is moving forward an agenda of food justice," said Supervisor Eric Mar, who sponsored the measure. "From San Francisco to New York City, the epidemic of childhood obesity in this country is making our kids sick, particularly kids from low income neighborhoods, at an alarming rate. It's a survival issue and a day-to-day issue."

Take a look at what the ordinance actually asks for here:

• Calories cannot exceed 600.
• Sodium cannot exceed 650 milligrams.
• Fat cannot exceed 35 percent of total calories, with less than 10 percent coming from saturated fats (some exceptions).
• Meals must include fruits or vegetables.

Seems reasonable.

And in fact, the Happy Meal is probably not dead—just reinventing itself to accommodate these healthier demands. In a time when childhood obesity is on the rise and this generation has a life expectation less than our own because of it, can we really afford NOT to demand more from the food industry? The San Francisco Supervisors have let us know what they think in their clear 8-3 majority vote last Tuesday.

Time.com writer Josh Ozersky offers his opinion on how this will impact the food industry:

The problem with the San Francisco approach is not that it won't work — it probably will. If you are trying to keep kids from eating big, fattening meals, so as not to become big and fat themselves, arm-twisting McDonald's into making its Happy Meals less caloric is one means by which to do so.

Another means of ensuring a healthy AND happy meal future for our children is through education. At Denver Urban Gardens we’re doing this through supporting 25+ school gardens, allowing kids the opportunityGenerations connect while learning first hand the joys of gardening and the goodness of fresh, local food. to get their hands dirty and experience a growing season as well as take valuable vegetables home to family. Our philosophy incorporates a cross-generational approach through our “Connecting Generations” program as we work to empower students to make informed and intelligent food choices. We value nutrition education and ultimately believe that the intrinsic benefits of community gardening and empowerment to make smart food choices are worth more than any toy.

Read more about our School Garden & Nutrition Education programs here.

Food in the News

Posted by Emily Frost, Communications & Programs Intern.

Earlier this season, the Denver Post featured a story about the high price of healthy eating. Touching on food history, environmental influences and the politics of government subsidies, the article explores the complicated reasons influencing the cost of healthy foods, specifically fruits and veggies, and how that translates to one Denver family’s personal experience. The disappointing reality is that

“If Martinez wants each member of her household to have one peach, it'll cost her about $3. If she chooses Kraft macaroni and cheese, she can get 18 servings — with 400 calories and 580 milligrams of sodium in each — for the same price.”

This illustrates perhaps why Americans are falling short of the CDC’s expectations that each American should The Denver Post cites that "only half the recommended servings of dark green vegetables are available", according to the USDA findings as published in "Health Affairs", March 2010. These greens were sold at the Fairview Elementary School Garden Harvest Festival.be consuming two servings of fruits and three of vegetables daily, as reported by NPR. However, it is not just a lack of affordability or accessibility—according to the Post article, America does not actually grow enough fruits and vegetables to meet the 5-a-day goal, making consuming a healthy diet increasingly an issue of availability.

How are Americans responding to growing prices of food and corresponding growing levels of hunger and malnutrition? NPR gives an example in this story that tracks one family’s experience of gathering food from a variety of assistance programs. At the national level, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, offers food stamps to those in need. In addition to using these stamps at grocers, SNAPs can also be used at many local farmers’ markets, increasing access to locally grown healthy food and supporting our local economy. Food Banks provide another option, as do local soup kitchens, for those cobbling together affordable means of feeding themselves and their families. Here in Denver, the SAME Café is a unique restaurant that serves up a fresh, organic meal for donations or volunteer time exchanged in the kitchen, rather than set prices, and believes that everyone, “regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy food while being treated with dignity.” 

Of course another supplemental option is growing your own veggies through gardening.  DUG has done plenty of research alongside the Colorado School of Public Health on the benefits of community gardening, specifically. The findings of the "Gardens for Growing Healthy Communities" community-based research initiative include, among other benefits, these facts specifically relating to the articles highlighted in this post: 

• More than 50% of community gardeners meet national guidelines for fruit and vegetable intake, compared to 25% of non-gardeners.

• 95% of community gardeners give away some of the produce they grow to friends, family and people in need; 60% specifically donate to food assistance programs.

These children learn first-hand the value of working in community gardens.Additionally, there may be a financial benefit to growing your own grub. Rob Baedeker explores “What’s the Value of home-grown food?” in his piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. One gardener he interviewed found that his family of 5 saved $2000 over one year of home gardening. That gardener and the writer conclude that ultimately, monetary value is only a small part of the worth inherent in growing your own produce. The cultural exchange, first-hand learning, neighborly relationships, physical activity, and practice of living in community are all invaluable parts of the community gardening experience.

Read more about the inherent worth in community gardening, or better yet, get involved yourself! Check out the gardens in your neighborhood and contact your garden leader to get involved, or give us a call at the DUG office (303.292.9900) to explore volunteer opportunities.



Letter from the Director

Summer letter from DUG Executive Director Michael Buchenau
This letter was also published in the Summer 2010 Edition of The Underground News.  

We’ve all experienced what it means to be emotionally attached to a “place”. It could be a home, a scenic vacation spot returned to year after year, a neighborhood coffee shop, a school campus or even an old ballpark. Positive connections to a place seem to be associated with emotions and experiences, as well as with fond memories. Becoming attached to a place often seems to involve a sense of stewardship and a willingness to put forth effort to care for a place.

At DUG, we’ve intuitively known that this is what occurs with community gardens. In fact, it is in the care of a garden plot and the garden as a whole that attachment seems to develop. Through good and not so bountiful seasons, damaging hailstorms, changing garden membership, successes and failures, and even the occasional garden conflict - community gardeners grow increasingly attached to their garden as a “place”. Their optimism for the possibilities in the garden seem to expand with each passing season.

For the past 4 years, researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health explored the relationship between place attachment and community gardens, and in particular how place attachment might affect people’s decision-making around healthy lifestyle choices. In this edition of the Underground News, Dr. Jill Litt continues her series on the research findings with a spotlight on the concept of place attachment. Her piece entitled Rx for Healthy Place Making: Making Places Meaningful, builds off of her article in the spring edition, which focused on “collective efficacy” and community gardens.

I find community gardens especially unique when it comes to the concept of place attachment. Gardens are everyday landscapes that are worked, nurtured and always changing. They are places where gardeners develop an active and on-going relationship with the land, while the land gives back in return. Gardens are unique in that they are just as much about the social network of gardeners as they are about the physical garden space - one cannot exist without the other. Community gardens are places where people grow food and grow healthy together, and as such, are at the same time both very simple and very profound.

After our 100th garden groundbreaking at Ruby Hill Park on September 25th, I’m struck by how unique each of the 100 DUG gardens is in both its physical and social makeup. I marvel at how people of all ages and backgrounds become attached to their garden. They care equally about their garden and their fellow gardeners, and they become attached to what the garden means in their everyday life.  And it is in that depth of attachment that gardens have the potential to create lasting change.

Michael