All gardeners are required to pass a background check, performed at no cost to the gardener. The forms are provided by the garden leaders.
One time per month during the growing season, on the 3rd Saturday from 8:00-11:00am, gardeners are asked to join in work days to keep the garden growing. Three of these Saturday workdays are mandatory, the other days are at your convenience/schedule. The raised garden beds are assigned to Edison school classrooms and Student Green Team.
For more information please contact Larry Volkening at larry.volkening@gmail.com
There are other Denver Urban Gardens where you may choose to garden. Plot fees and guidelines vary depending on the Garden: Brown, Regis, Sandoval, Elitches and Mt. St. Vincent, to name a few. You are welcome to learn more at www.dug.org or 303.292.9900. They also offer workshops.
Check this site out for your guide to farmers’ markets, roadside stands, u-picks, and agritourism activities and www.comarketmaker.com to find food products that are grown, raised or processed in Colorado.
How our Community Garden came to be:
In November of 2008, Boy Scouts Pack 11 was involved in a Good Turn Week project called “Go Green with Scouts.” The project required that 600 bags containing energy-saving devices and educational materials donated by Excel Energy be assembled and distributed. Since Pack 11 holds their scout meetings at Edison Elementary school, 45 scouts, along with their parents and siblings, distributed these energy saving kits to 600 houses in Northwest Denver.
Danielle, an Edison neighbor, was the recipient of one of these kits. She emailed the Scout office to thank them for the environmental gift bag and stated, “In this time, when politics and environment are coming together, it is so important for our community youth to be involved in projects that can impact so many on a local level.” In addition to thanking the scouts personally, she wanted to work with the scouts on community composting/gardening/recycling projects and “help keep this sustainability effort in the forefront of the Highlands neighborhood.”
Pact 11 put Danielle in contact with the Edison Adult Green Team and the vision of a community garden at Edison took root. She made the initial contact to Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) while the scouts continued to be involved by passing out 600 flyers to notify the neighbors about the plans for a community garden.
The project continued to gain momentum over the next few months as Edison neighbors, parents and DUG finalized the details. Two Edison parents, who are professional landscape architects, donated their talents and time to draw up the blueprints for the new garden. In April, the scouts, along with the surrounding Edison community, broke ground on the garden. Everyone pitched in to plant the orchard and remove a gravel path so that the garden plots could be marked. The community garden was born. The excitement continued throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall as vegetables and flowers were planted and the garden grew.
The garden was not the only thing that grew that year. A sense of community around Edison Elementary grew too. The neighbors who live around the school now feel more connected to Edison Elementary and enjoy teaching the school children about planting and growing a garden as they donate their time to help students plant their own plots. The students are amazed at their ability to plant a seed and watch it grow into food that they see on their kitchen table. Edison parents are excited to be part of a community and school that has worked hard to do something that makes our neighborhood a better place to live.
Scouting is about developing good character to make good choices. Watching a simple “Good Turn” seed blossom into a community garden is a lesson that will last a lifetime for the scouts and parents of Pack 11 who assembled and delivered those 600 kits.
