Thank you to all of our volunteers who supported DUG’s 2023 programming!
As a way to celebrate and appreciate the amazing work our community has done this past year, DUG hosted our annual Harvest Happy Hour in early November at Zeppelin Station in Denver’s RiNo Arts District. More than 200 volunteers showed up for the event from across various programs, including our Tree Keepers, Master Composters (now Community Composters), Garden Leaders, and more! At the event, we cheered, handed out awards (see the list below for winners), ate incredible food, and passed out door prizes.
Read below to see all of our award categories and winners!
Our Volunteers
- Everything Everywhere All At Once Volunteers: Haley and Aidan
- Garden Club Volunteers: Sarah and Lisken
- SPOT Volunteers: Our amazing power couple, Ann and Jeff!
- Workday Heroes: Bill and Dean
Garden & Garden Leaders Awards
- 1st Year Gardens: South Lakewood Elementary (Garden Leaders – Cassie and Jennie) and Cheyenne Arapaho Park (Garden Leaders – Satya and Nathan)
- Resiliency: Focus Points (Garden Leaders – Brandon and Solomon) and Montbello Five Loaves (Garden Leader – Denise)
- Transformation: McMeen (Garden Leader – DeziRae), Honor (Garden Leader – Sun Mi), Blue Spruce (Garden Leader – Kristine), and Wyman at DC21 (Garden Leaders – Max and Anna)
2023 DUG Corps
Christina, Kourtnie, Rayanna, and Sarah
Tree Keepers
- Wheat Ridge – for excellence and leadership in community integration and food sharing: Miranda and Charlotte
- Samuels – for high site standards and leadership in perennials management: Lindsey
- Tennessee Gateway – for dedication, creativity, and persistence in the face of unique challenges: Ruth, Kyle, and Cassandra
- Program Champions – for special and sustained effort in supporting Tree Keepers and the Food Forest Initiative as a whole: Bill and Krystyn “Yy”
Master Composters
A special thank you to our 2023 Master Composters for all of the work they put in to dive deep into all things composting, recycling, and community engagement. In this ten-session course, participants learned about the science of composting, resource conservation, and how to use recycled materials to support gardening efforts. Please celebrate our graduating class of 2023, including: Anna, Brittney, Christina, Dean, Diana, Donna, Estevan, Jessica, Kris, Kristy, Laurie, Leah, Marlee, Mia, Michelle, Natasha, Rob, Ryan, Sami, Taylor, Tom, and Zoe!
Want to join our 2024 Community Composters Training? Fill out this interest form, and we’ll notify you when applications open!
We want to thank everyone who supported this event and especially our 1,368 volunteers (plus 25 SPOT volunteers!) who collectively worked over 4,773 hours to support various DUG programs in 2023!
We would also like to give a special thanks to the following brands and organizations for helping make this event happen:
- Alveóle, for tabling and providing a delicious honey tasting as well as educating our guests about the importance of beehive colonies and beekeeping in Denver
- Balcony Buddies, for donating various colorful railing gardens for our door prizes!
- EUREKUS, for donating incredible educational tech bloom kits for our door prizes!
- GrowOya, for donating 6 Oya™ Watering Pots for our volunteer door prizes – these watering pots help slowly supply water to garden plants all year round!
- le’ Bakery Sensual, for the incredible worm cake they made for our Master Composters – they truly are the coolest cakes in Denver!
- r.Cup, for bringing reusable water cups for guests to use to minimize plastic waste
- Scraps, for providing composting services to ensure our event was as low waste as possible
- The Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, & Resiliency (CASR) for their generous donation to help make this event possible!
- Wag Hotels, for donating pup-friendly boarding stays for our door prizes!
- Zeppelin Station, for offering up their space for us to use and for donating specially-curated bar drinks for our guests (and for our board member, Adam Larkey, for making it happen!)