Every year, Denver Urban Gardens assists community members at every step in the process of creating their own community gardens, with land preservation, agency coordination, neighborhood organization and construction management. The majority of our community gardens are in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods, and many gardens specifically serve the homeless; the physically, developmentally and emotionally challenged; and families and children in severe poverty. These days, we are working with communities to build 15-20 new community gardens each year.
In late 2011 and early 2012, several community gardens were completed and are now enjoying their first full growing season. Here’s a little about just a few of those gardens:
- Denver Green School Community Garden, Denver
The Denver Green School is a DPS Innovation School, which means that all school curriculum, programs, and policies are educator-directed. The school community is one of the most earnest we have ever worked with, with teachers taking advantage of the garden as a learning tool whenever possible. Garden features include a classroom-sized amphitheater for school programs and performances, as well as a small orchard of peach, apple, and cherry trees, and raised “sensory” beds planted with varieties with unique smells, colors, and textures. This garden is also adjacent to Sprout City Farms’ first school farm site.
Students planting raspberries at the Denver Green School Community Garden
- Charles Hay Elementary School and Clayton Elementary School Community Gardens, Englewood
Enthusiastic school communities and tireless volunteer garden leaders characterize each of these two new gardens, our first school-based community gardens in Arapahoe County. All that enthusiasm and effort paid off, as Englewood has gained two new beautiful and productive gardens that are off to a great start.
Planting beds at Charles Hay Elementary School Community Garden
- Maplewood Apartments Community Garden, Lakewood
The Maplewood Apartments Community Garden was developed in partnership with Metro West Housing Solutions, and serves low-income youth, families, and seniors by providing a space for growing fresh, healthy food, and fostering intergenerational learning. The numerous raised beds in this garden accomodate senior and disabled gardeners that may have difficulty with traditional garden beds.
Maplewood Apartments Community Garden, with mural by students at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design
- O’Connell Middle School Community Garden, Lakewood
The O’Connell Middle School Community Garden marks DUG’s first-ever junior high garden. We are thrilled to be able to serve older students in this garden, as well as participants of the adjacent Boys & Girls Club. This garden’s special features include a large, interactive exploratory garden, designed to engage older students. The school community has fully embraced the garden as a teaching tool, and has even hired a part-time coordinator to work with teachers, volunteers, and parents in implementing school garden curriculum.
- Spencer Garrett Community Garden, Aurora
The newest addition to DUG’s family of Aurora-based community gardens, Spencer Garrett, is open for gardening. Located in the Northwest corner of Spencer Garrett Park, this 36-plot garden is one of the many treasures this newly revitalized space offers the neighborhood. In a grand opening event in October, city officials and neighbors came to celebrate all that the space has to offer. In addition to the beautifully new community garden, built in partnership with Aurora Parks and Open Space, there is a huge playground that the kids at the event wasted no time in christening, scrambling up, down and over brightly colored jungle gyms and slides. Parents watched from the shade of the covered picnic tables nearby, as neighbors got in their daily exercise by walking together around the perimeter path surrounding the park. Gardeners at Spencer Garrett have a variety of other amenities to make good use of, including an onsite storage shed for tools and shaded picnic tables.
- East 13th Street Community Garden, Denver
In 2005, Denver Urban Gardens worked with Mercy Housing to build a garden to serve a refugee population in Denver’s East Colfax neighborhood. The garden was so popular that gardeners requested an expansion. In 2011, we worked with the Trust for Public Land and the City and County of Denver to transform the adjacent derelict lot, which children were using as a play area and soccer field, into a community park and expanded community garden. The new garden space is located opposite the original garden and is greatly expanded, with 40 plots, a tool storage enclosure, compost bin, and benches and picnic tables. The adjacent park is being built by our partners at the Trust for Public Land and Denver Parks, and will include a playground and soccer field, and a shaded community gathering space. This garden is also served by one of our new Free Seeds and Transplants distribution centers, at the nearby Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Aurora.
Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of this year, we will be working on close to a dozen new gardens that will be open in time for the 2013 growing season. Here’s a summary of a few new gardens in planning:
- Lakewood Dry Gulch Community Garden, Denver
In partnership with Denver Parks and Recreation, this garden is to be located along the Lakewood Dry Gulch Greenway adjacent to a new playground and will serve residents from the surrounding West Colfax Community.
- Lowry Boulevard Apartments Community Garden, Denver
This garden is being developed in partnership with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, to serve impoverished families in Denver’s Lowry neighborhood.
- Maxwell Elementary School Community Garden, Denver
This garden will serve a primarily Latino school community in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood. This garden is also located near Montbello High School and Montbello Central Park.
- Morey Middle School Community Garden, Denver
This garden will be located in Denver’s densely populated Capitol Hill neighborhood, and will be DUG’s first middle school garden in the City and County of Denver. An enthusiastic group of teachers, parents, and community members are helping to make this very urban garden a reality.
- Focus Points Family Resource Center Community Garden, Denver
This garden will serve clients of Focus Points Family Research, which serves primarily young, low-income, Spanish-speaking immigrant families in northeast and north central Denver through family-literacy programming.
- Jefferson High School Community Garden, Edgewater
This will be our first official high school community garden! The school community that will be served by the garden is low-income and very diverse, and we are working with an enthusiastic group of parents, school officials, teachers, students, and schoolvolunteers to complete this garden by late August, in time for Fall planting.
Site plan for the Jefferson High School Community Garden
- The Learning Preserve Community Garden, Lakewood
The Learning Preserve Community Garden will be located at the Belmar Literacy Center in Lakewood, and will serve adult and youth clients of The Learning Source’s education programs.
- Samuels Elementary Community Garden, Denver
This garden will serve a diverse and low-income school community in Denvers Hampden South neighborhood.
Thank you to all our incredible supporters, partners, and volunteers for helping to make each garden a reality and an ongoing success. To view our complete list of active gardens, click here.
Click here to return to the Spring 2012 edition of The Underground News.
