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News

Aug 13
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Show your support for DUG

By News

Grow Food, Grow Community Premium Pullover Hoodie

Our Premium Pullover Hoodie is a soft, well-made hoodie, made of 52% combed and ringspun cotton and 48% polyester.

$44.99

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‘Get Dirty with DUG’ Premium Pullover

The Premium Unisex Pullover Hoodie is made by Bella + Canvas. Made of 52% combed and ringspun cotton and 48% polyester, it’s soft and cozy–perfect for those brisk Colorado mornings.

2 colors available.

$40.00

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Grow Food, Grow Community Garment Dye Shirt

The Garment Dye Unisex Tee is typically made from 100% ring-spun cotton, garment-dyed for a vintage look. We love the unique character that the garment-dyeing process lends to each shirt!

$26.99

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New! Grow Food, Grow Community Premium T-Shirt

The Premium Unisex Tee is a classic crewneck t-shirt. This shirt is usually made with a 60/40 blend of cotton and poly. All fabric is combed and ringspun for a soft texture and premium feel.

$24.99

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Jungle Judy Fan Club Premium T-Shirt

The Premium Unisex Tee is our classic crewneck t-shirt is made with a 60/40 blend of cotton and poly. All fabric is combed and ringspun for a soft texture and premium feel.

$24.00

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‘Get Dirty with DUG’ Striped Tee

The Football Jersey Tee is a unisex crewneck t-shirt by LAT Apparel. The style features white arm stripes and a hemmed chest panel. This shirt is made with a 60/40 blend of cotton and poly. The exception is the White/Black which is 100% cotton. All fabric is combed and ringspun for a soft texture and premium feel.

$28.99

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‘Get Dirty with DUG’ Premium Tee

The Premium Unisex Tee is a classic crewneck t-shirt usually by Next Level Apparel. This shirt is made with a 60/40 blend of cotton and poly. All fabric is combed and ringspun for a soft texture and premium feel. 3 colors available.

$24.00

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NEW! Jungle Judy Fan Club Crewneck Sweatshirt

The Crewneck Sweatshirt is a classic fit unisex shirt. The sweatshirts are a 50/50 blend of cotton and poly.

$36.00

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DUG Garden Tote

Show off your love of DUG with a high-quality branded tote with two front pockets! These sturdy tote bags are made of 100% natural cotton canvas, making them ideal for carrying of all your garden supplies around the garden, and cute enough to bring just about anywhere.

Measures 18” × 16” × 3”.

$20.00

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DUG Sticker

Display your love of DUG wherever you go! This high-quality die-cut sticker features our DUG logo surrounded by plants and pollinators. Add it to your water bottle, your laptop, your wheelbarrow, your car–you name it!

4″ x 5″

$5.00

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Aug 03
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Micro network activation with the DUG Corps

By News

With 188 gardens and around 17,500 gardeners, our DUG network has grown quickly over the last 10 years. After soliciting feedback from the community during our 2020 Listening Tour, we recognized that we could more efficiently organize our network to better connect with our gardeners to ensure all gardens had the resources they needed. From our brainstorming, two ideas emerged:

  1. to create a ‘corps’ that could be ‘hands in the soil’ for DUG to ensure our gardens were resourced equitably and address any deficiencies
  2. to develop ‘micro networks’ within the DUG garden network so that neighboring gardens could connect and build relationships to organize collaborative workdays, learn from one another, and be a support when problems arose

After several months of diligent work, we are thrilled to share we now have seven micro networks within the DUG community garden system:

  • Green- SouthWest Sugar Snap Peas
  • Maroon- Northside Nasturtiums
  • Orange- Midtown Mung Beans
  • Purple- Central Cucumbers
  • Coral- Southern Spicy Peppers
  • Yellow- East Central Endive
  • Blue- Eastern Eggplants

In June, we also launched our inaugural cohort of the DUG Corps, who have been busy activating these micro-networks through garden workdays and community gatherings.

Their efforts began with a massive public awareness campaign to community gardeners, sending information about the networks as well as invitations to upcoming micro-network events. Then they got to work in the gardens themselves!

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In the last two months, our DUG Corps have visited about 50 out of our 137 public community gardens to check in on the gardens and assess whether they were meeting the requirements of our Baseline Infrastructure Initiative. They have also planned and organized outreach for 15 micro network events, along with attending more than 10 workdays or community events that the gardens themselves organized in order to lend a hand and support their work.

In addition to their community organization work, they have additionally supported or led around 17 corporate or volunteer workdays at under-resourced gardens. Perhaps most excitingly, they have also helped activate three gardens that were in a state of neglect by organizing massive plot cleanups and engaging neighbors to become gardeners!

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We are so thrilled with all of the work the DUG Corps has put in so far this season, and can’t wait to see how our micro networks continue to strengthen in the coming years.

If you’d like to request the DUG Corps visit your garden to support a workday or a community engagement event, please contact dugcorps@dug.org. 

Jul 16
Love0

Mark your calendars for our Fall Plant Sale

By News

Our Fall Plant Sale is back!

Mark your calendars! Our Fall Plant Sale will be Saturday, August 7th from 10am-1pm at DUG HQ within the Posner Center.

We’re excited to be bringing back our popular Fall Plant Sale to the community, along with a free ‘Tips for a Fall Garden’ workshop from Senior Education Specialist Jungle Judy Elliott running at 11am and 12pm.

Come get cool-season plants + cover crop seeds, stock up on organic compost, and pre-order your fall garlic while enjoying time with other DUG community members.

We’ll also be hosting the SAME Café food truck on site. Come for the plants, seeds, and soil and stay for the delicious food!

Pre-order your garlic now
Jul 13
Love0

DUG + MLB = a home run!

By News

On Friday, July 9th 2021, Denver Urban Gardens partnered with Spark the Change Colorado and Major League Baseball for a day of volunteer service at three different DUG gardens to kick off All-Star Week!

DUG hosted more than 70 volunteers at the Horesbarn Community Garden, Morey Middle School Community Garden, and at Delaney Farm. Working together, the groups completed a variety of projects including building a shade pergola, laying down pathways, planting fruit trees, and weeding beds.

Despite scorching temperatures, the day was fun-filled and highly-productive as volunteers came together in service of community and food access. The  partnership with Spark the Change Colorado and MLB was a winning combo, for sure!

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DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
DENVER, CO - JULY 09: during the Spark the Change Volunteer Event at Morey Middle School on Friday, July 9, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Eve Kilsheimer/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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Images courtesy of Major League Baseball.

Jul 07
Love0

There are some new faces at DUG!

By News

As part of our Baseline Infrastructure Initiative, we’ve activated our first-ever DUG Corps along with the Fransisco Cordero legacy apprentice program and a youth green team through Groundwork Denver! 

Meet the DUG Corps Members

Our first two Corps Members, Anastasia Hill and Eliza Greene, are providing daily ‘boots on the ground’ support for our 180+ gardens. Their work focuses on supporting community-led workdays with extra hands, organizing and leading ‘micro-network’ (clusters of DUG gardens located near one another) educational and social events, and visiting all of the gardens to connect with Garden Leaders and gardeners about their needs, troubleshooting as necessary.

Anastasia started with DUG in 2017, helping to lay the foundation for garden micro-networks as part of her Environmental Leadership graduate thesis project with Naropa University. With a focus on food justice, social systems, and community care, she continued volunteering as both gardener and garden leader in the following years. Originally from Florida, she’s fallen in love with the Colorado ecosystems, including both land and people, and is passionate about bringing individuals closer to each other and the environment that helps them thrive.
She brings over 10 years of non-profit experience in a variety of roles, all involving community activation and connection. In her free time, she’s a Jiu Jitsu practitioner and enjoys gardening at home with her cat or lounging in parks with friends and plenty of snacks.

Eliza joins the 2021 DUG Corps with a passion for gardening and community. She grew up around gardening and farming in Massachusetts and worked in landscaping seasonally for many years. Eliza brings her love for digging in the dirt and helping things grow with her to her role at DUG. With a background in sociology and community organizing, she also brings curiosity about the world around her and dedication to making it better. She loves that community gardens are a place of skill-sharing, education, empowering people, and building community resilience.

In her free time, Eliza is most likely going for a walk in nature with her rescue dog Jasper, lost in a good book, or attending a community event.

We are still hiring for one more seasonal DUG Corps position. BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, non-native English speakers, and other underrepresented folks are encouraged to apply!

Meet our Fransisco Cordero Legacy Apprentice 

Our inaugural apprentice, Alex Oldham, works closely with our Director of Physical Infrastructure and Community Engagement, Nessa Mogharreban. Under her guidance, Alex is working to learn the ropes of urban garden construction and maintenance. Together, they lead our volunteer workdays, attend to maintenance calls in the garden, and work on new infrastructure projects related to the BII.

Alex is our newest member of the team. He is a very outgoing yet nonchalant person who is easy to connect with. Alex is a natural athlete with a lot of motivation to be in better physical shape and reach higher levels of skill. He loves all kinds of fruit and is trying to add more vegetables to his menu.  He grew up doing farm work with his grandfather and is familiar with getting out and doing physical activities. He loves to spend time alone to watch movies or vibe to some music and is a lowkey superhero nerd.

Learn more about Alex in our Faces of DUG project.

Meet our youth green team with Groundwork Denver

Baz, Dante, Greg and leader Magali are part of Groundwork Denver’s program of youth environmentalists, acting as the organization’s task force to implement projects to improve Denver’s urban environment. The principal goals of the Green Team are to prepare youth for educational and career success, encourage them to become engaged members of the community and demonstrate alternative career pathways in fields like natural resources and sustainability.

Under the supervision of our Director of K-12 Education, Rob Payo, the green team works in tandem DUG Corps members to activate underutilized gardens by clearing weeds, laying compost, and repairing plot borders. The green team also maintains our DUG demonstration plot and joins volunteer workdays as needed.

As part of our partnership with Groundwork Denver, the green team is introduced to nutritious cooking through bi-weekly cooking classes at DUG HQ, where they learn how to prepare food that is harvested from the gardens!

Jul 07
Love0

Word of Thanks with Kyle Clark

By News

DUG is honored to be this week’s 9 News + Kyle Clark’s Word of Thanks recipient!

The Word of Thanks micro-giving campaign brings viewers across Metro Denver together in the spirit of collective fundraising. Every $5 or more that is donated through the campaign helps Denver Urban Gardens provide infrastructure upgrades to existing community gardens and reduce barriers to growing fresh, organic food for metro Denverites.

We work directly with communities to increase access to land, provide resources for people to successfully grow healthy nutritious food, as well as gain resilience for themselves + connect to their communities.

Donations support our new Baseline Infrastructure Initiative (BII), a holistic program centered on establishing and increasing equity across DUG’s entire network of community gardens. The BII covers both physical and human resources to ensure that all 188 of our gardens are resourced at an equitable level to support a thriving community garden producing optimum yield. Read more about our BII work here.

Donate to the Word of Thanks campaign today
Jun 28
Love0

Live virtual Q + A with Jungle Judy is back!

By Education, News

Last year during COVID, we started a virtual Q + A series with our own Senior Education Specialist ‘Jungle Judy’ Elliott to an overwhelmingly positive response! So we’re bringing the series back!

Our live Q + As through Zoom allows you to bring Judy right into your garden to get your gardening questions answered, seek troubleshooting tips, and get best practices for organic gardening in the heat of the summer.

REGISTER FOR A Q + A SESSION
Jun 02
Love0

The Wonder Garden is now open!

By News

In May, Denver Urban Gardens had the pleasure of coming together as a community to dedicate the new Wonder Garden at Wyatt Academy, located in the Cole neighborhood. The Wonder Garden was funded by Jerry Conover in memorium to his wife, Jaquelyn Wonder.

The dedication party was a wonderful time to celebrate being able to gather again in the garden. Guests (including Wyatt Academy students who stole the show with excitement from the classroom butterfly release!) were treated to mariachi music and delicious local food as the DUG community celebrated the life and impact of Jacquelyn Wonder, as well as witnessed how her legacy will grow with future students experiencing the wonder of gardening.

We caught up with Jerry after the dedication to learn more about his decision to leave a garden legacy in honor of his late wife. Here’s what he had to say:

“The Wonder Garden at Wyatt Academy is such a perfect memorial to my late wife, Jacquelyn Wonder.

Jaquelyn and I met in the late ‘70s. We were both divorced and a mutual friend introduced us. We were married for almost 40 years. She had 3 kids and I have 4, so we have a large combined family with 15 grandkids.

Jacquelyn was a woman who overcame adversity, both in the form of family poverty and illness, and she made it on her own. Education was so important to her. After graduating from Denver’s East High school, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and had a successful career in teaching and consulting and as an author.

Since we’ve been together, Jacquelyn always loved gardens. We lived in East Denver and gardening was one of her primary hobbies and loves.

When we moved downtown 12 years ago, a condition of our moving was that she had to have a garden. We were fortunate to find a place in LoDo that happened to have a 2,400 square foot deck, which we then made into a rooftop garden. She was able to downsize from a conventional house to more urban living, and still retain the beauty and enjoyment from having a home garden.

In the middle of the city, I have this little enclave of nature right outside my door that has perennials, annuals, trees, and birdfeeders. I wake up to birds singing; it’s a great way to start my day. It’s been a lovely reminder of how much she loved gardening.

When I knew that I wanted to dedicate a community garden in Jacquelyn’s memory, I asked DUG where the best place for us to support a new garden would be.

DUG gave me a list of half a dozen sites. I looked at all of them, and then we went to talk to Andrew and Kate, the directors of Wyatt Academy. It turned out that the timing and school were just right.

Jacquelyn overcame learning disabilities throughout her life and one of her interests was how people learn and how the brain works. The idea of openness and creativity were always themes in her life.

DUG’s model of partnering with schools is really a win-win deal. The educational partnership made that much more sense. Seeing the success of Wyatt Academy really resonated with me. They had just done their goal-setting for the year, and one of their core values for the school was “wonder”- which was serendipitous.

It was DUG’s introduction to the prospect of a garden there that began the journey. I’ve been familiar with the neighborhood for quite a while because it’s close to Manual High School where my own kids attended. The neighborhood has a wonderful history to it.

It’s been an inspiration to work with the school. Their connection with the community is just wonderful. They have a community-based social services center that provides meals, supplies, and assistance to the families of the kids who attend the school and to the community generally. The school has become part of that community in a most effective way. I know Jacquelyn would have loved the site of the garden just as much as I do.

The building process took less than two years. Through our family’s Donor-Advised Fund at the Denver Foundation, I was able to provide the funding for the garden. DUG and Wyatt Academy took charge right off the bat! The short time it took to complete is a tribute to the rapid and nimble response of DUG, the school, and other small charities. The Community Coordinator at Wyatt, Maria Estrada, is an unbelievably talented woman.

Working with the DUG team and all of the school representatives was just a joy for me. It was a pleasure not to be burdened by bureaucracy during the process. Katherine Smith introduced me to the sculptor Peter Durst, whose birdhouse sculptures are now displayed in the garden. The playful nature of his sculptures fits right in with the garden’s theme of wonder and connection to nature. The bird sculptures were created by Joan Walker.

I would love to see the sculptures at the Wonder garden inspire further installations of public art. Denver’s mandate that 2% of the budget goes to public art show how important the arts are to our community. Bringing in three-dimensional art seemed to be a natural next step in a community garden. Finding a way to display art publicly contributes to the fabric of our community.

May 17
Love0

Baseline Infrastructure Initiative (BII)

By News

In 2020, DUG sought feedback from more than 500 stakeholders in order to gain insight into what our community members needed from DUG. The feedback had a common theme: community gardeners and Garden Leaders wanted and needed more of DUG.
Our gardeners asked for more support, education, leadership training, community building, and to ensure equity across the network. In response, in 2021 DUG launched our new Baseline Infrastructure Initiative (BII).

The BII is a holistic program centered on establishing and increasing equity across DUG’s entire network of community gardens. The BII encompasses 3 core areas– Physical, Human, and Resource– to ensure that all of our gardens are resourced at an equitable level to support thriving community gardens producing optimum yields for their needs.

BII Success looks like:

All garden plots are fully utilized.

To achieve this outcome, DUG will provide translators and on-the-ground support for plot applications to overcome language and technology barriers, develop and distribute multilingual resources for DUG mentorship and educational programming, recruit representational leadership at all gardens, and provide support for community-building events including through DUG Corps and paid apprentices.

All gardens meet a baseline physical infrastructure standard.

This entails completing regular repairs and improvements to at-need gardens, including providing water access, shade structures, and tool storage. This also looks like delivering resources like compost, seeds, and seedlings, regardless of a garden’s ability to pay.

Interested in supporting a specific project within the Baseline Infrastructure Initiative?

Contact Executive Director Linda Appel Lipsius.

DONATE TO SUPPORT THE BII

The BII is funded with support from:

June 2021 Update

With the support of our new apprentice, DUG has already begun the process of several garden upgrades as well as new garden construction to create enhanced gathering areas, better sustainability + conservation features, and inclusive, multilingual signage. Our new DUG Corps team members are focusing on assisting more new gardeners, facilitating quicker garden repairs and maintenance, and building community at the gardens and across the Micro-Networks by providing a conduit for gardener feedback to-and-from DUG HQ.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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