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May 10
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Keep kids engaged with summer garden clubs

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DateFriday, April 12, 2013 at 1:34PM

By Shawnee Adelson, Youth Education Facilitator

Gardeners at Swansea Garden Club, Summer 2012The beauty of the garden club is its flexibility. Each DUG garden club is run at the community level, making each one unique. Some are after school, and some are only during the summer. Some meet once a week, some meet more often. They can focus on art, gardening, science, literature, cooking or multiple subjects. Garden clubs are supervised by teachers, parents, Connecting Generations mentors and/or community gardeners, but are really run by the students who participate. Though the details may vary, all garden clubs connect students to the garden in a fun, consistent, and nontraditional way.

The following showcases a few examples of different garden clubs throughout DUG’s network of school-based community gardens:

  • Bradley Elementary’s garden club was started in 2011 by a group of volunteers including Connecting Generations mentors, Slow Food Denver, volunteers, community garden leaders and parents. The program is open to 4th and 5th grade students, and because of intentional fundraising efforts, there is no charge to students to participate. Each year the group of students grows as the club becomes more well known. Mentors, parents and teachers divide the students’ time between culinary, gardening, reading, journaling and science lessons and activities. Parents are asked to participate in at least one session of garden club or prepare a healthy snack to encourage their support and to help bring the ideas from garden club home. Over the summer, students and parents are invited to visit the garden on Saturday mornings when Connecting Generations mentors will be available to guide garden activities.
  • Fifth graders at Swansea Elementary participate in our classroom and garden-based nutrition education program funded by INEP. During the spring students start seedlings in the classroom, so they can be planted outside once it warms up. It was a natural extension to start a summer garden club so the students could continue to care for the plants and benefit from the bounty. For the last two years, Swansea’s summer garden club has been coordinated and run by two Connecting Generations mentors. The kids meet once a week to do various standard gardening projects, but also do fun activities like art projects. The summer garden club has grown into an afterschool Youth Farmers’ Market, which has become hugely popular with the students as well as the parents.
  • As one of the pioneers of the Youth Farmers’ Market program, Fairmont Elementary’s garden club has a long history. Over the years it has taken on various permutations, depending on who is running the program, and the interests of the students. Most recently the summer garden club was run by a parent, who had a more free-form model than other schools. Each day was dedicated to a different group of students. For example, every Saturday morning was for parents to bring their kids in grades pre-K through 3rd. This spring, a new parent and teacher group will be coordinating the garden club, with the intention of starting seedlings indoors and preparing and planting the garden beds before school is out for summer.
  • Valdez Elementary began its first garden club in 2012, and it was so successful that the leaders plan to continue this year. Their activities ranged from scavenger hunts to encourage plant and insect identification skills, to taste education for fruits and vegetables, and mapping the garden plots, which was directly related to one teacher’s classroom lessons. They largely used Denver Urban Gardens’ garden and nutrition curriculum, which leaders found to be user-friendly and relevant to classroom lessons. This year they plan to hold their first Youth Farmers’ Market, which will be run by the garden club students beginning this fall.
  • Ellis Elementary began their first garden club at the beginning of this school year. A teacher and Connecting Generations mentor team have met with K-2 grade students each week throughout the entire school year. They used the winter months for making mural art, building a worm bin, learning new vocabulary and learning about nutrition through healthy snacks and MyPlate activities. With the growing season around the corner, they started seedlings indoors and each week hope for good weather to get outside to build a compost pile and prepare the soil.

If you are interested in starting a garden club, our resource, Troubleshooting a Summer Garden Program can help answer many questions educators face. For further assistance, DUG’s upcoming Helping Kids Get Healthy Educator Workshop on May 19th will focus on planning and implementing Summer Garden Clubs.

We love to hear your stories! If you would like your garden-based school program to be featured in a future Underground News, please contact us!

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2013

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May 10
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A new season at DeLaney Community Farm

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DateFriday, April 12, 2013 at 2:07PM

By Faatma Mehrmanesh, Operations Coordinator at DUG’s DeLaney Community Farm

 

Joy and Trepidation: WE’RE EXCITED! Excited for another year of local food production for our community of shareholders, community partners and farm stand. Excited to try new techniques in organic pest control and maximizing our use of space while building up a healthy soil in a semi-arid high plains environment. Excited to have a new seasonal staff of Farmer Interns and work with new community partners! Excited to get dirty and watch seeds grow into a system of abundant food and abundant relationships.

We are NERVOUS about the forecast of another season of heat and drought! While organic farming does make every effort, with considerable success, to protect the earth we cultivate from the extreme heat and create an optimal growing environment of healthy bacteria and balance in nutrients and pH levels, we can’t predict the outcome or the extremes we’ll experience. Plus it’s not unusual for the weather to be unpredictable here.

Drought: With the worst water levels that we’ve seen in more than a decade and anticipating temperatures higher than we’ve experienced since the Dust Bowl, we have to do our part and make sure that we are intentional about our water use. There aren’t restrictions on agricultural use but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things we can do to use less and still feed our plants. Fortunately for us, organic growing practices have some built in measures for water conservation, like mulching and companion planting, that we already do. DeLaney also converted to drip irrigation about four years ago, to reduce the amount of water wasted (evaporating in the hot air via sprinklers) and have worked closely with the City of Aurora Parks and Open Spaces and Water Conservation offices to ensure that we are taking every measure to use only what we need. We might even do some xeric demonstration gardens around the farm!

Down the Rabbit Hole: Oh Bunnies! Why are you so cute and terrible? As many of you know from experience in your own community or backyard garden, the bunnies won’t go away. They will eat all your crops and they are less fearful than they used to be! Last year the rabbit population exploded around DeLaney Community Farm and brought all sorts of havoc and devastation with them.  Drastic times call for drastic measures… within reason.

This year at DeLaney we are excited to partner with Nature’s Educator and their rescued raptors! These falcons, hawks, kestrels, and maybe even some owls will visit us on the farm to exercise and have lunch… on rabbits! These kinds of closed loop systems of problem solving make us so happy and we feel a lot less guilty. I’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on our successes and failures as the season progresses.

Expansion: DeLaney Community Farm is adding SIX new fields for cultivation this year, which is just under a half acre! …and you know what that means…. more food! More food for shareholders, the awesome WIC participating families, for the folks who make it out to our farm stand every Saturday and our amazing community partners, Project Angel Heart, the Gathering Place and joining us this year, Nooch Vegan Market! We are grateful for our long-standing partnership with the City of Aurora for helping us make this happen!

Our 2013 Staff: Every year we invite a new set of dedicated young farmers to work with us at DeLaney.  It’s a shared learning experience where we all explore the processes, successes and failure of working a mission driven (peri) urban farm, using only organic growing practices! Our staff this year is Zoe Anjo (Farmer Apprentice), Kim Schmidt (Farm Intern), Oliver Wray (Farm Intern), Emily May, (Programs & Outreach Intern), and Laurie Rochart (Programs & Outreach Intern).  It’s going to be an excellent year! Happy Growing!

Interested in becoming a DeLaney Community Farm shareholder? Contact DeLaney Programs and Outreach Coordinator Heather DeLong to be added to the waitlist. Click here to learn more about DeLaney Community Farm. 
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May 10
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Bringing composting to the people

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DateMonday, April 15, 2013 at 10:02AM

By Judy Elliott, Education and Community Empowerment Coordinator

Youth educators learning to build classroom wormbinsFor many years, Denver Urban Gardens has developed, facilitated and partnered with other individuals and agencies to provide educational programs that maximize the skills of our staff and volunteers. In addition to our Master Community Gardener Program, which provides in-depth knowledge of the many facets of community garden development, we offer the annual Master Composter Training and Outreach Program, in partnership with Denver Recycles.

For over twenty years, this train-the trainer program has attracted a diverse group of volunteers who contribute far more than their required forty hours of educational outreach. The ten-week training program provides the opportunity for volunteers to learn the basics of integrated solid waste management from the staff of Denver Recycles and gain a solid understanding of recycling, modern landfill construction and explore some of the newer uses of landfills as sources for co-generation of electricity. Guest lecturers from Metro Wastewater Reclamation District and Hudson Gardens discuss challenges in our Denver watershed that occur from excess nutrients flowing into the river, and also cover the basics of xeriscape gardening and design. An all-day field trip takes us to visit the electricity generators at a large landfill, a recycling facility and a commercial composting operation. Intensive instruction is provided in composting and vermicomposting (composting with red wiggler worms), with two full days devoted to setting up our composting demonstration site at our Gove Community Garden.

Outreach is carried out from May through the end of October at four different farmers’ markets, many community gardens, fairs, and dozens of free compost classes at Gove Community Garden. There are also many opportunities to work with youth in Denver Public Schools, helping to set up worm boxes in the fall. Teachers then utilize the worm castings as they transplant spring seedlings into the garden.

Our Master Composters stay together, developing strong friendships, continuing to bond in our series of monthly potlucks and workdays at Gove. From discarded stems, branches, overgrown veggies, landscape trimmings, pet fur and weeds, we create the rich humus that can hold 100% of its weight in water, provide a season–long release of major and minor nutrients, decrease our carbon footprint, and provide the fertile environment for growing healthy plants and people. If you’re interested in learning how to participate in the 2014 Master Composter program, believe that composting truly needs to be a household word, and live for getting your hands in the soil, please check for updated program information by the end of the third week in October. Our free two-hour public compost classes begin in May. Registration for public classes is open one month prior to your desired class. Come and learn with us! The full schedule is available here.

For further information, please contact program coordinator Judy Elliott.

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2013

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May 10
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Planning for optimum garden health

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DateMonday, April 15, 2013 at 10:27AM

By Judy Elliott, Education and Community Empowerment Coordinator

Planting at the Fairview Community GardenAs community gardeners, we naturally join together to commune, share and listen, thriving as we learn different strategies for growing our plants and ourselves. We do well as we contemplate mixed plantings, utilizing herbs and flowers to attract beneficial pollinators, reveling in the endless array of culinary masterpieces that can be created from several tiny seeds. Although our Stage 2 drought may be thought of as a reason to dampen our enthusiasm, I prefer to see it as yet another teaching tool that expands my horizons and ways of viewing gardening.

Devote time to planning that allows: season–wide productivity, essential soil preparation, planting smaller quantities of vegetables at the optimum time for their health, correct watering techniques, cultivation of the soil on a regular basis, mulching exposed soil surfaces, an evolving knowledge of specific insects and diseases that impact different crops, prompt harvesting and most of all, viewing your garden as a peaceful oasis.

Soil Preparation: DUG recommends that all gardeners get to know their soil, whether a heavy clay–based or sandy medium. Divide your plot prior to amending it with landscape–based compost, into several internal beds, each with walkways between the fixed growing areas. This not only welcomes feet into the garden, but also limits the areas that require watering (and also the possibilities for weed proliferation). Amend only the growing areas, and thoroughly mix around an inch of compost into the top three to four inches of soil, using a hoe to break up larger soil clumps until they form small aggregates. Do not work your soil when it is wet, as it will dry to the consistency of adobe brick.

Choosing Veggies: Make 2013 the year of quality, not quantity, when it comes to the veggies you plant. Cool season seeds, such as lettuce, arugula, mustard, spinach, radish, peas, beets, carrots, green onions, and herbs such as parsley, dill and cilantro can be planted in small quantities, using the succession planting method, after you have prepared your soil. In this method, ten or so seeds of preferred crops listed above are planted at one – week intervals until the middle of May, to assure a staggered maturity. As crops decrease in productivity, they should be removed, chopped up and put in the compost pile. It is preferable to leave sufficient space in each of your beds (within the larger plot) for warm and hot season vegetables such as beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers. Plan on only growing a few tomatoes, one or two squash plants, and staggered plantings of cucumbers. Cool season veggies and herbs benefit greatly from adding calendula and bachelor buttons to different areas, to attract beneficial pollinator insects.

Correct watering, cultivating and mulching: DUG recommends that gardeners cultivate the soil around all plants prior to watering. With light cultivation, emerging weeds are broken off at the soil surface and can be left as a surface mulch. Bare soil leads to soil compaction, making it difficult for roots to penetrate deeply to withstand the effects of drought. Use a screwdriver, branch or your finger to assess whether plants need water. Insert your tool of choice about four inches into the soil, and if it has moist particles of soil adhering to it when you remove it, you can wait several days before watering. It is essential to water only at root level, keeping the water flow on low, so as to not erode the soil or disturb young stems or germinating seeds. Plants with hairy leaves, such as tomatoes, squash, pumpkins and cucumbers will resist mid and late season diseases much better when you do no overhead watering. Mulched soil retains water well, extends the growing season for both cool season crops, and provides a more moderate soil temperature for warm weather crops. As mulch decomposes, it stimulates the growth of beneficial microorganisms and increases organic matter, which is typically low in Colorado soils.

Insects and Diseases: Carry insect guides with you in the garden to correctly identify all stages of insects, whether they be the early season flea beetles, producing shotgun type holes in foliage, masses of aphids, producing curled growth, or the white cabbage butterfly, laying eggs on members of the broccoli family. Books such as: Pests of the West, by Whitney Cranshaw, or Rodale’s Color Handbook of Garden Insects, by Anna Carr, are invaluable. Communicate regularly with community gardeners who may have developed unique methods of pest and disease control.

Gardens as peaceful gathering places: A well maintained garden is far more than a bounty of produce. It stimulates our senses and encourages a certain slowing down as we work on communal tasks, develop strong friendships with the network of other dirt lovers and, perhaps most of all needs our nurturing. The 2013 year of using less water may turn out to be the year of planting deep roots that expand our notion of what is possible, of leaping into uncharted waters knowing that our fellow gardeners will help us along the way, of appreciating more and seeing the beauty in every leaf and flower. Plant less, grow more.

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2013

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May 10
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Planting Peace

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DateMonday, April 15, 2013 at 10:48AM

By Emily Frost, Events and Garden Leader Coordinator

How do you heal a community devastated by violence? If you are Ana and James Chavez, you do it by reclaiming wasted land, connecting searching youth with a past to be proud of, and getting your hands dirty. This is a redemption story.  

Ana and James lost their teenage son Troy to gang violence. Troy Chavez was one of 108 children in Denver and the surrounding areas who was a victim of violence between 1992 and 1994- the summer of 1993 is actually known locally as the “Summer of Violence.” Ana and James wanted to change the trajectory of hopelessness that they saw in the youth in their neighborhood, to provide them with a different path, as their son Troy had tried to do himself. They started with peace marches in the community, calling for an end to the violence as they carried crosses bearing the names of the 108 children who were victims of violence on their backs throughout the neighborhood. This gained widespread community attention, and neighbors and fellow families of survivors and victims alike soon drew together to create something more permanent. Ultimately, the community decided to construct a memorial, and in so doing create lasting means of engaging community, honoring the memories of the young victims, and providing children an opportunity to choose a different path. A community garden concept was born.

Leprino Foods offered the space on the corner of 38th and Shoshone. They used to have a greenhouse on site, but a fire had ravaged the building and left an unsightly vacant lot that became a popular drug haven. Ana and the community were feeling overwhelmed by the amount of space. It was about that time that Michael and David (then Co-Executive Directors) of Denver Urban Gardens got involved. They had heard about the good community organizing Ana was doing and offered to help. At first, the community members were uncertain about bringing in outsiders to help accomplish their goals, but when DUG made it clear they were committed to helping and supporting the community vision and had no desire to run the project or tell folks how to do it, the project moved forward.

Ana says that community members were very interested and engaged in the project because this community, largely of Mexican ancestry, were people who came from a farm working background, and who have always been connected with the earth. There was a shared belief in the importance of connection to the earth, as well as a growing desire to reconnect children with the earth and with their history. The community decided to call the garden “The Troy Chavez Memorial Peace Garden,” but the garden itself is dedicated to all children who are victims of violence. Ana notes poignantly that “Somehow, if you don’t have a past, all you have is a future, and it makes it a difficult journey. So we decided to go back to the past to reconnect our people to the earth and what is important.”

“When I say ‘our people’ and ‘our ancestors’, I mean the Aztecs, Mayans, and Toltecs. We started teaching that we are not foreigners to this land. We are not immigrants to this country. We are indigenous people. And teaching this sparked a pride in the community, because we’re always told we’re not from here, but we are. So when we started telling people about the garden and the vision of the garden, the youth themselves decided they wanted to build a miniature Aztec ball court.  It’s the first thing that you see when you walk into the garden.” It is a testament to the ownership these young people have taken over the garden, as are the tiles that the youth drew of their hopes for their future.

“All these kids, they only see their own city block. They don’t think of growing or becoming a bigger person, because they think it’s all they have, this is all that there is for them.” So Ana takes kids on perspective-expanding, out-of-city adventures. The youth work towards these different trips by volunteering. For example, after volunteering to plant trees to restore vulnerable forest areas, Ana and James took the youth to Rocky Mountain National Park on a camping trip. They go skiing, river rafting, horseback riding, and do a variety of different activities with the kids to introduce them to a broader life than the one that they presently have. They are working toward changing the mindset of these youth, which often doesn’t extend beyond what life might look like if they make it to 21 years of age. Ana shared that one hard reality to swallow came when she asked the youth to design memorial tiles to decorate the garden, to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. None of the tiles extended past young twenties–a snapshot into the mentality of these youth who expect to die young. But Ana, and the garden, are changing that.

“The garden is really important because it touches so many people. We get kids from La Escuela Tlatelolco, Denver Kids, Servicio de la Raza, local daycares, and juvenile diversion programs. We also work with an organization called Peer One, in which incarcerated men come help in the garden. People are drawn to this garden because when you walk into this space, you feel something there… this community garden is all about fighting violence with peace.”

This summer, you can support the Troy Chavez Peace Memorial Garden by partaking in the youth run markets. Keep an eye out on the DUG website for dates and times. To learn more about how you or your organization can get involved in the programs at Peace Community Garden, please contact us.

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2013

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May 10
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Volunteer Spotlight: Pamela Flowers

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DateMonday, April 15, 2013 at 11:13AM

By Lauren Christensen, Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator

April showers bring Pamela Flowers, this edition’s volunteer spotlight, to the garden. As a Master Community Gardener, as well as a member of this year’s Master Composter program, Flowers volunteers with DUG on several levels and does it all with a smile. In addition to being involved through these channels, Pamela divides her time between being a garden leader at Cheltenham School Community Garden, where she is working with the other garden leaders towards creating a plot dedicated to food donation, and volunteering at Fairview Elementary School, where she teaches fifth graders about eating healthier food, nutrition and gardening. She states that it’s amazing to see the students at Fairview change throughout the program, from having no interest and not wanting to try new foods, to becoming more focused students, who are now excited to try new foods and ask amazing questions about the process of gardening. Pamela truly enjoys working with these students, investing the time to get to know them and their interests.

Pamela’s involvement with DUG began before she even lived in Denver. She said that she had been looking for a similar organization in Baltimore, her former home, for ten years, and when she found the DUG website prior to moving, she knew she had to be involved. Flowers loves being a part of DUG because she knows she is doing important work that impacts people’s lives in a positive way, such as helping someone obtain access to healthy food or find a community to be a part of. Flowers says that if she can help just one person become a little bit healthier, all of her effort will be worth it. She adds that helping people find the joy in gardening and touching the earth is another benefit, as she believes that doing so has a positive impact on one’s all around health. Pamela encourages everyone to get involved with DUG!

To learn more about volunteering with Denver Urban Gardens, click here.

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2013

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May 10
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Hands-on Education in the Garden and in the Classroom

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DateMonday, October 14, 2013 at 3:45PM

By Shawnee Adelson, Denver Urban Gardens Youth Education Facilitator

Are you interested in how to use the garden as an educational tool? Have you looked at DUG’s School Garden and Nutrition Curriculum?

This curriculum is current, relevant and extremely well-done. Every elementary school garden team leader should review DUG’s site. – Edible Schoolyard

The seasonal approach of our curriculum bridges gardening, nutrition and science using standards-aligned lessons for the elementary school classroom and garden. Most lessons are one hour and include a healthy, kid-tested recipe that is appropriate for the classroom, topic and season. All of our lessons are available for free to download from our website along with many other supporting documents that cover everything from Integrated Pest Management to Classroom Management Tips. With over 30 lessons to choose from, it may be hard to know where to start. Our list of Key Lessons highlights some of our favorite and most relevant lessons.

Making spring rolls at the August Helping Kids Get Healthy WorkshopEach lesson includes the applicable Colorado Academic Standards in science and comprehensive health with suggested extensions and modifications. Many of the extensions and modifications include how other disciplines may be integrated into the lesson. Literacy standards are a primary focus for many struggling schools and many of our lessons include a writing component. DUG’s education team will be spending some time over the slow winter months to align our lessons to the applicable literacy standards. We also provide suggestions for interdisciplinary extensions, including ideas for math, art and social studies.

The beauty of the curriculum is how adaptable it is to different age groups, populations and settings. Educators who participated in our Helping Kids Get Healthy Educator Workshops in 2012 reported adapting the lessons for four year olds, kindergarteners, middle and high school students and adults. Some shortened the lessons or modified the supplies. And some even took sections of various lessons to create their own lessons.

Our curriculum has made its way around the state and the country as a basis for other programs’ curriculum. The Garden Coordinator for Alamosa Community Gardens participated in one of our Educator Workshops and from there created a fourth grade curriculum to use in their school gardens. The state of Kansas used six of DUG’s core lessons to create their own family gardening curriculum for their SNAP-Ed program. We are thrilled that others find value in a resource we have spent many years developing and refining.

Judy Elliott (a.k.a. Jungle Judy) developed many of these lessons at Fairview Elementary School, where she has been teaching nutrition and gardening to Don Diehl’s fifth grade class for over ten years. Sara Gunderson, who teaches the DUG curriculum in four fifth grade classrooms at Swansea Elementary. This year we are piloting a new approach to expand our reach to schools who have shown interest in having an outside educator come into their classroom to teach about nutrition and gardening. Four Connecting Generations volunteer mentors will be teaching twelve DUG lessons in classrooms at Johnson Elementary and Maxwell Elementary. The University of Colorado Denver’s Integrated Nutrition Education Program (INEP) provides funding for our in classroom efforts.

To provide more support for educators who wish to use the curriculum, DUG offers the Helping Kids Get Healthy Educator Workshops. Held six times a year, these workshops are based on the curriculum and are designed for teachers and volunteers who work in youth education programs that focus on nutrition and gardening. Each workshop focuses on at least one seasonally appropriate lesson, a compatible and kid-friendly snack and hints and tips from seasoned our educators. Our next workshop is November 7th and will cover worm composting in the classroom and Fat Sandwiches. Click here for more information and how to register for the upcoming workshop.

Back to The Underground News: Fall 2013

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May 10
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In school-based community gardens, generations connect

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DateTuesday, April 15, 2014 at 11:22AM

Jessica Romer, Denver Urban Gardens Community Initiatives Coordinator

Community building, volunteerism and education are at the heart of each school-based community garden. These intentionally located gardens provide a venue for community building between the neighbors and school community members that coexist within a neighborhood, but seldom collaborate on mutually-beneficial projects. In these gardens, neighbors grow food for themselves and teachers, parents and students grow food for taste education, farmers markets and the cafeteria, all the while exploring the multidisciplinary learning opportunities that the garden has to offer. Central to the sustainability of a garden on school grounds are the community gardeners, who are often the willing caretakers of the school plots over the summer, as well as the the volunteers, who support the school’s garden-based educational efforts. Of equal importance are the students’ participation in gardening and programming and the emphasis on education in maintaining the relevancy of a community garden on school grounds. Interest in this model has grown steadily. A third of DUG’s gardens are now located on school property, across four school districts.

For three years Denver Urban Gardens engaged in a participatory research study, Gardens for Growing Healthy Communities, with the Colorado School of Public Health to learn about the health and social benefits of community gardening. In the process of engaging participants, through focus groups and surveys, the idea to further build bridges between community members and schools at DUG’s school-based community gardens became obvious. On one hand, there are teachers and students who want to engage with the garden at their school to learn about science, nutrition, and life skills, but teachers need support to make this possible. On the other hand, there are community members who have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and may be retired or otherwise have the time and capacity to offer their undertutilized skills to their community. This realization informed the concept for an initiative called Connecting Generations that would engage older adults as mentors to utilize their extensive life skills to support teachers, students and school-based community garden programs.

Many community gardeners at DUG’s school-based community gardens volunteer informally and support teachers as they involve their students in the garden. Connecting Generations formalizes these interactions by providing screening, training and support for volunteers and the school site leaders who coordinate garden-based programming. Pamela Flowers, Connecting Generations mentor, shares, “This program has allowed me to be in the garden working alongside the children to see how it impacts them. More than once, I’ve watched children who struggled so hard to function appropriately in the classroom become kind, attentive, enthusiastic, confident, and happy youngsters in the garden. If I think or talk about it for more than a very short time it makes me cry. It’s been an incredible experience.”

In 2008, we recruited our first cohort of volunteer mentors for the Connecting Generations Program. Since then, we’ve worked with over 70 mentors at nine schools. These mentors are retired teachers, principals, librarians, healthcare professionals, writers and gardeners, among many professions. While the group of mentors is primarily made up of older adults, we’ve also worked with students, particularly from local nutrition and dietetics programs. Individually and collectively, the mentors have much to offer to young people, and the group is truly intergenerational. Mentors may be community gardeners, grandparents, or neighbors, all with an interest in supporting the development of young people by learning in gardens.

Mentors initiate, facilitate and support garden-based programming at a number of DUG’s school-based community gardens. The type of programming varies at each school, depending on their unique goals. Most leaders focus their energy on afterschool garden clubs, the Garden to Cafeteria Program, Youth Farmers’ Markets and classroom learning. Connecting Generations matches volunteers with a school site and program that fits their skill set and personality with the needs of the school. Ideally the school is close to or within the volunteer’s neighborhood. Some mentors are comfortable taking a lead role from the start, facilitating programming and recruiting a team of volunteers to work together. Others have more subtle ways of providing support; preparing snack or guiding small groups of students as they work through various garden and nutrition-based activities.

The garden can be a very gratifying place to work with young people. Janet Johnston, Connecting Generations mentor, says, “It is rewarding to help children and families learn how to garden. The excitement and pride seen on each child’s face at time of harvest is what makes participating in the Connecting Generations Program so worthwhile for me.” Janet and Pamela volunteer as a team at Maxwell Elementary School, co-teaching nutrition and gardening lessons to a 5th grade classroom throughout the school year.

When asked why she volunteers as a mentor, Pamela Flowers adds, “Mentors in this program have the opportunity to influence the way individual children view the food they eat, the food choices they make, and where their food comes from. It has been amazing for me to witness the change in some of the kids regarding their attitude toward new, healthier food. At this point in the year, most of the children are willing to try anything we serve them. This was not the case when the school year began. Now, they will taste it no matter what it is and I think that alone will impact them for the rest of their lives! And now the majority of the kids, the majority of the time, like it. I love that!”

As the growing season approaches, we are seeking mentors to join our efforts in DUG’s school-based community gardens. To learn more and get involved, contact Jessica at 303.292.9900 or Jessica@dug.org.

Back to The Underground News: Spring 2014

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May 10
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Married Community Gardener ISO Friends with Vegetables

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DateFriday, May 28, 2010 at 12:13PM

From John Hershey of Rakish Wit
Originally published in the Spring 2010 Edition of The Underground News

This will come as a surprise to my friends and former teachers who are familiar with my general attitude toward hard work and delayed gratification, but I’m planting some apple trees in my yard this spring. This is a big step for me. I’ve never even planted perennials before. I just didn’t feel ready for the kind of long-term commitment that asparagus and rhubarb demand, to say nothing of trees that probably won’t make any apples until my kids are in high school. The thought of digging in and working hard now for a potential benefit that won’t even start for 4 or 5 years — I didn’t think I had it in me. Sounds like college, and I remembered how that worked out.

But having recently moved to a place where I hope to put down some roots, I’ve decided to put down some roots. And to show you how much I’ve changed since college, I’ve been studying diligently about organic fruit growing. From all this reading I have retained one key tip: If you have only one variety of apple tree, it won’t produce much fruit. You need cross-pollination among a diverse community of trees for maximum benefit in the orchard.

The same secret to success applies in a community garden. Not so much to the plants, although a wide variety of vegetables makes for a healthy garden ecosystem. But when the different kinds of squashes pollinate each other, a volunteer vine will sprout from your compost pile the next season and produce a zucchumpkin or some other splotchy, inedible hybrid that’s as odd but not nearly as much fun as a labradoodle. So the concept applies more to the people. As we’ve all seen in countless ways, the greatest strength of a community garden is the diversity of the gardeners, each of whom brings a unique set of skills, experiences, backgrounds, personalities, recipes and jokes, producing a garden that is much more fruitful and fun than it would be if we all had more in common.

But digging holes for fruit trees gives you plenty of time and incentive to stop and think, and I’ve started to wonder how far the analogy goes. I’m playing matchmaker out there, after all, setting up trees I think are compatible with each other. Love is literally in the air in the orchard and the garden, in every grain of pollen floating on the breeze or catching a ride on a honeybee’s leg in hopes of hooking up with just the right female flower. We always talk about the friendships that form in a community garden. But in such a sensual place, do more intimate bonds naturally form among the gardeners too?

I don’t know the answer personally, because I’m lucky enough not to be on the dating scene anymore. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that love connections are being made in the garden. To find out, I conducted some research on various online dating sites. (If my wife checks my Internet browsing history, I’m going to have some splainin to do.) As I suspected, community gardens are widely recommended as popular date destinations.

For example, a website that gives dating advice for divorced dads (which looks especially bad on my “Favorites” list) encourages older guys reentering the market to eschew the bar scene and head for the neighborhood community garden. And even a site with dating tips for teens lists community gardens as a fun place for young people to hang out, albeit well down the list below bowling, miniature golf, and factory tours.

Another website, yourtango.com, claims community gardening will make you more attractive to other singles (after a shower, presumably). Apparently your image as an environmentally conscious, community-minded altruist appeals to potential partners. “Plus,” the site generalizes, “urban farmer dudes are super hot.”

Present company excepted, of course. But just as some dimly lit bars are known as meat markets, sunny community gardens are total vegetable markets! What with all the pollen-drenched honeybees diving into flowers and the vines intertwining with each other and the glistening fruits, the charged atmosphere of a garden makes it the perfect place to put humans in the mood for love. You can’t help thinking about the birds and the bees when they’re flying all around your head.

By recommending it as a good place for a nervous couple to relax and overcome the stress of a first date, these websites recognize the amazing power of a community garden to break down the social and physical barriers that often prevent us from getting to know other people in our community. We each have our own space in the garden, but there are no fences between the plots, only pathways leading from one to another. This makes it easier to form relationships, and not just romantic ones. None of our superficial differences matter, because we immediately have important things to talk about, like why it’s so hard to germinate carrot seeds, what to do with all the zucchini, and so on.

So even if you don’t find romance in the community garden this season, you are sure to hang out with a group of really fun, interesting and diverse people, and you will improve each other and the garden through cross-pollination. The more experienced growers will happily impart their knowledge of gardening (and life), and the new crop of gardeners will enrich the soil with fresh energy and excitement. And when you leave for the day, they will all probably share some fresh, healthy food with you. Now that’s what I call friends with benefits.

To read more garden-variety humor and commentary, visit John’s website.

AuthorDenver Urban Gardens | Comments Off | |
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May 10
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The Hedonist’s Garden

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DateWednesday, November 10, 2010 at 12:56PM

He even made the cover!Our own John Hershey, board member, former garden leader, and author of Rakish Wit, is featured in the Fall issue of Edible Front Range! Check it out:

In the springtime, garden writers everywhere rhapsodize about that glorious season of rebirth, when the earth comes alive, bursting with new vitality. This is all wonderful, but there has to be a flipside. If spring is the time of rebirth, then autumn must be the season of redeath.

While the spring garden teems with hope and possibility, a feeling of impending doom hangs over the garden in the fall. We count the days until the average first frost date, wondering if each tomato we pick will be the last one to ripen in time. The contrast is intense: Just as the garden reaches its peak lushness and finally begins to yield a bountiful harvest, a crisp new bite in the morning air reminds us of the inexorable passage of time that will suddenly turn it all into compost material.

The ephemeral beauty of the garden is a metaphor for our own lives. And long experience has led me to a profound insight that can help us make sense of these complicated feelings:

Life is like an ear rub.

Find out how life is like an ear rub by reading the full post at Edible Front Range. To read more from John, click here.

AuthorDenver Urban Gardens | Comments Off | |
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