A Community Garden for All
Greeley Parks and Recreation Department, Greeley, Colorado
The north side of Greeley—a small city an hour north of Denver—is home to residents who primarily identify as Latinx and working class. It’s also a food desert, lacking nearby grocery stores with fresh produce.
The neighborhood has only a handful of local organizations that serve their community. One organization, Al Frente de Lucha is a long-standing Latino advocacy and social justice group organized primarily by and for Latino adults and seniors of North Greeley. It’s covered inside and out with artwork connected to the history of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and they manage a garden tucked behind their building from which they offer fresh food to their community.
Across the street from Al Frente de Lucha is another organization: the Rodarte Community Center, operated by the Greeley Parks Department. They provide kids with recreational and educational activities year round, free of charge. When they converted their computer lab into a kitchen, they had hopes of teaching kids about food, cooking, and coming together around fresh vegetables. Recognizing the health benefits of outdoor access, they also wanted to find a way to get kids playing in the sun and learning in fresh air.
Yet, while these two entities are situated across the street from one another, they struggled to collaborate on projects that would work towards their shared goals and bring them together.
In a fortuitous moment, a small, vacant lot next to Al Frente de Lucha was acquired by the city. Rodarte wondered if it could serve their new priorities: get kids outside and grow food. What came of it, however, went far beyond those two goals.
Rodarte approached Al Frente de Lucha, wondering if they could actually make something of the blank canvas together. The two organizations envisioned a garden like that of Al Frente de Lucha’s that could be larger, more visible, and publicly accessible. It could also connect the seniors and adults with extensive cultural knowledge and experiences, as well as gardening prowess, with the kids playing under Rodarte’s roof.
The best part: all they needed to bring this to life were garden beds, soil, seeds, and an irrigation system. Over just four months they set up water systems, built 13 beds, and planted their first round of seeds. For anyone walking by, it was impossible to imagine these two organizations were anything other than always connected with one another. Today, they manage the space together. Anyone in the community can adopt a bed of their own, and grow what they want. The groups collect what they grow and use it in their kitchens and give produce away to the community.
The seniors have the opportunity to teach the youth about culturally important foods and talk about their life experiences, while the kids bring boundless energy and ideas about what they want to grow. Beyond digging in dirt next to one another, they also host joint events. With the marigolds and few pumpkins they grew the first year, they had a Día de Los Muertos celebration, sharing stories of ancestors and loved ones and importantly, celebrating their favorite foods.
The intergenerational project is a story of taking a place and turning it into a space. Walls, both literal and figurative, came down and cultural connections were built; all the while serving an entire community.
