Denver School Gardens

While attending the National Children and Youth Garden Symposium in Denver (and receiving the Growing Good Kids Book Award from the American Horticultural Society and Junior Master Gardeners for Our School Garden!) I toured several Denver school gardens. I was impressed by several things. For one, the number of schools with gardens in the district is very high. Coming from Seattle I was jealous of the many schools that had gardens as well as their size and scope. This is due to the work of both Slow Food Denver and Denver Urban Gardens. As you can see from the above photo, through the work of DUG, community and school gardens are partnered at many schools. I was also impressed by the way fresh food from the gardens was getting into the cafeteria. I toured several large plots on school grounds that are dedicated to this. Kids are not only getting a garden-based education, they are eating organic foods that they can see growing every day that they walk to school. Additionally there are also Youth Farmer Markets where the produce from the gardens are sold by kids both as an educational experience and to raise money for their programs.

I know Slow Food Denver’s model (slowfooddenver.org) is being adopted by other Slow Food chapters across the country. Everyone should check out the work of Denver Urban Gardens (www.dug.org) as well!